TMNT: Love Story
by princessebee
Summary: 2k7verse. Directly follows the events of "Prey", found in my profile. In the wake of Leonardo's absence, the rise of the Nightwatcher and a night of bloodshed and heartbreak, Raphael and Amber have been thrust together. But can their fragile relationship survive the conflict of their lives?
1. Part One: However Far Away

_This fic takes place directly after "PREY" which was written in 2007 and can be found on my profile. It will DEFINITELY help to read it first! This is part of a series so there is not much introduction or backstory explained here and it refers to events and relationship development that has taken place previously._

_This fic contains depictions of or references to sexual situations, explicit drug use, child sexual abuse, rape, violence and murder and sensitive readers should proceed with caution. No abuse or drug use is enacted by or undertaken by Raphael_  
_However, despite this, this is very much a romance story. It is a dark and hopefully poignant romance between two strange and damaged characters, but a romance nonetheless. In the writing of this story I made certain very specific decisions about style and content for explicit reasons, which I will go into in an author's note when the story is complete. Until then I can only hope this story will satisfy you in the manner in which it's told and please feel free to leave concrit._

* * *

**PART ONE: However Far Away**

**ooo**

_Whenever I'm alone with you_  
_You make me feel like I am home again_  
_**\- Lovesong, The Cure**_


	2. Chapter 1

"It would never work."

His voice is so low she can barely hear it. He's crouched there on her lumpy little mattress, partly turned toward the bare and glassless window where the sun continues to bleed in, illuminating the scabbed walls of this dismal place she calls home. He's on the cusp of leaving, leaving her to face a raw and awful dawn alone after he risked everything to save her life, and she cannot bear it.

It hurts every joint in her body, but she inches towards him, shrugs. "Why does it have to?"

Then she grasps the hem of her dress and pulls it up and over her head, wincing as her abused muscles scream in protest, drops it to the mattress. "Why should that stop us?"

Slowly, his head turns towards her and she can feel the helpless flit of his eyes on her body though now the sun is behind him, filling the window with blinding gold, and she cannot discern his expression. She's nothing to look at, she knows. But it doesn't matter. She knows he wants her and she's sure now, she wants him. It's enough.

Her heart is pounding so hard she feels woozy, the roar of her blood like the ocean in her ears. She can see the rim of his carapace outlined in light, the flat of his inhuman skull, how his enormous three fingers press lightly to the dusty floorboards. He shouldn't even exist, and yet, here he is. And what is about to happen feels as inevitable as the sunlight that bathes them both in brilliance, illuminating every unforgiving detail so that there is no illusion about who and what they are.

Suddenly, he has shifted back onto his knees, has turned towards her and her breath catches, her heartbeat speeds up, something long forgotten flickers in her loins as she moves forward to him. His face is abruptly before her and she can see the broad, snubbed snout and the wide mouth fixed in a fierce line, the intent that burns in his eyes so that her knees liquefy and she almost falls forward into his arms. And then they are kissing, and she can scarcely breathe for the lump in her throat.

His mouth is enormous, his skin rough and he has no fucking idea what he's doing.

Not that she's much better. It's been a lifetime since she kissed anyone. Since she trembled with desire in another's embrace. Since her nipples pricked and that insistent need tingled away between her thighs. She was a different person when she last felt this way, years ago, before she left her father's house and Billy behind. She's not sure she's okay with this, but she's not sure she can stop either.

She's flung her arms around his neck and she can feel the smooth, unyielding muscle where his encircle her waist as their mouths open clumsily, fervently against each other. Their tongues crash together, entwine; his is enormous and awkward but in that moment when they are gripped by desperation and lust, it sends an unexpected jolt of arousal through her body, a tingling that rushes straight to the spot between her thighs that she's all but forgotten about and she clutches at him harder, thrusts her tongue further into his mouth.

Their lips slip as they strive to find a rhythm beyond the gasping fumbling they are engaged in, struggling to fit their mouths together, and it grips her in a sick wave that he is not human. That she's about to fuck a mutant turtle, because she wants to, because she wants him, the morning after she was raped and nearly killed. The morning after she watched him easily, remorselessly, kill the men who had attacked her.

If she thinks about it a second more she might puke, so she squeezes her eyes shut tighter and straddles him, the firm muscles of his thighs solid beneath her own aching ones, his plastron hard and textured against her tiny breasts, tilting her head and driving her tongue deeper and deeper into that enormous mouth, like she wants him to consume her.

She can feel the tremble in his powerful arms as they grip her too tight, too much, so that her abused ribs seem to shudder, and his mouth – or is it hers? – tastes of blood. She remembers the look in his eyes as he crouched beside the corpse of the man who had taken her, the blank cold gaze of the killer. Then she remembers how he looked at her moments later, how she could see he was struggling against every impulse he had not to throw himself on her and fuck her right there, amidst the splayed bodies and the gore.

And she remembers how bad she wanted it.

Suddenly she feels him pressing against her, hard and slick and she gasps, wrenches her mouth free of his and tugs at his shoulders. Raphael's eyes are blazing into hers as he lowers her quickly to the mattress, the impact abrupt enough to make her ache, and the erect head of his cock is sliding through tender folds of skin, nudging her opening so that she reels at the rush of desire it elicits and she can see from the feral hunger in his eyes he is moments from thrusting into her.

She has never felt like this, has never so desperately wanted someone so that her entire body vibrates, so that her mind seems to unhinge and drift in a haze of lust. She just has the presence of mind to fumble into her backpack where it lies nearby, grasping for the Hello Kitty! purse she keeps equipped and spilling brilliantly coloured squares of foil onto the mattress as she searches for the handful of extra-large condoms she always carries, just in case. His eye are wild, his plastron rising and falling with each heavy breath as he waits and her hands shake violently as she rips the gold packet open. Their mouths meet in a sloppy, clumsy kiss as her practiced hands reach between their bodies and rolls the sheath of latex over him.

The back of her hand brushes the textured armour that plates his torso as she withdraws it and as their lips part again she look into his inhuman face and feels her throat constrict and she knows it has to be now. _Now_ before she changes her mind.

She finds the tube of lubricant and anoints him generously with it, rubs it into herself as well while he hovers over her, panting and fearfully eager. Her fingertips brush the centre of nerves she usually ignores and the tingle that follows is profound in all its unfamiliarity.

Their eyes lock again as she guides him, and although it is terrifying and she cannot bear it, she can't look away either.

They inhale as one as he pushes eagerly into her, and despite how exercised she is, despite the lubricant and her own arousal, it fucking _hurts_. He's huge and her body strains to accommodate him. But somehow she's excited by that and finds herself wanting him so very badly to fuck her hard, to fuck away the dim but pointed memory of the rape her body has retained, to fuck into her his own imprint so she will feel it for days to come and remember only him.

He starts thrusting almost immediately, clumsy, irregular and unsure and she cannot stifle the strangled whimper that rips from her throat, a sound that seems only to spur him on. They're gripped by something, some animalistic need the night's horror has provoked, a frenzy they are powerless to resist and as he falls quickly into a rhythm, pure sensation is taking over whatever thought and reason she has left. She clutches at his shoulders and hitches her ankles on the rough grooves of his carapace, and grits her teeth against the pain. She likes it. She likes how much it hurts, how absolutely consumed he makes her feel. Again their mouth crash together, and this time it's he who thrusts his tongue deep and hard into her mouth as his armoured hips continue to piston brutally into hers, his cock plowing into her and something inside her has suddenly released and her body simply accepts his. She becomes vaguely aware of how her fingers knead the hard muscle of his shoulders and arms, how savagely she nips at his lip, how her breath staggers in mindless gasps straight into his mouth. Her gut lurches a little; it's so weird not to be thinking about what she's doing, to not be calculating or planning or performing and she's not sure she can trust herself to this process of impulse and unfeigned immersion, not sure she knows how, and her chest tightens painfully as his thrusts grow harder and more surges of pleasure and pain sweep through her, overwhelming the doubts and uncertainties of her mind.

Their breathless kiss staggers to an end, lips pulling wetly apart and his hot breath gusts on her face. His own eyes are now squeezed shut as he's consumed by the world of ecstasy he's finding within her, she grasps his hard shoulders, tilts her hips up and suddenly the textured lower scutes of his plastron are brushing against her, right on the bud of her, and her body's response is immediate and astonishing in its seeming readiness. She realises it's an actual fucking possibility and she gazes up into Raphael's concentrated, inhuman face, the clenched eyes and puckered brow, the grimacing mouth as he plunges so forcefully into her it feels like her hipbones rattle and it's fucking amazing. She's feeling sick with it, with this rapture that overcomes all reason, the floorboards pressing hard into her back while his weight pushes into her from above, their limbs slick and entwined, the delicious friction between them causing unbelievable waves of sheer carnal joy to spike through her barren body. She wants to get off so bad it doesn't even matter she's being fucked by a mutant turtle the morning after she was raped and nearly killed.

But then he's gritting his teeth, his brow furrowing heavier as his thrusts helplessly speed up and he grimaces hard. "I'm sorry, Alex," he manages to gasp before he shudders all over and slumps onto her, his face burying into her neck, his hard plastron crushing her into the mattress and the feel of him throbbing powerfully inside her while she holds him, the sound of her name – her real name – echoing painfully round her heart. She hasn't heard it spoken by another in longer than she can remember; she has never heard it uttered in so profoundly intimate a moment, and it's unmade her. She stares unseeingly at the pocked and sagging ceiling as her gaze blurs with tears and her heart constricts painfully even as Raphael breaths unsteadily against her neck, the sweat that glazes his shoulders and arms damp and hot against her. Beneath her hands she feels the rough coldness of his carapace and within her she feels him start to slacken, the long muscles of her thighs are aching and his plastron is digging into her slight hips and he said her name right before he came and it's all she can do not to break down. She swallows hard around her heartache and blinks, and tears roll sideways across her temples, trickle into her hair. She forgot she told him her name. Didn't expect he would remember in a moment like that. Could not have anticipated how it would affect her to hear it in his voice, at such a time, when she had already laid herself so bare. And she is profoundly aware not only of how much more there is of her buried, but how easily he seems to unearth it, and that if she is not careful, he could keep on discovering her until there is nothing left.


	3. Chapter 2

For long, breathless moments, all he can do is slump on top of her and wait for his senses to stop reeling. His heart is a deafening racket in his chest and his cock continues to twitch with lingering pleasure, immersed in the snug, blissful heat of her body.

Gradually, his head stops swimming and he becomes aware of her slight frame beneath his own, how fragile it feels, how limply her hands rest on his shoulders, how very still she is, and in a moment of heartrending panic he raises himself up on his forearms and gazes anxiously down at her, only to find her staring up at him with a strange and brittle expression, her blue eyes watery and soft, her thin, bruised face framed in a wild splay of red hair. His heart seizes and he feels violently sick.

He swallows hard around the desert that is his throat. "You okay?" he manages to ask, his quiet voice seems deafening in the suddenly stifling room.

She blinks and swallows too, he can see her throat shift beneath splotchy bruises with the effort of it and recalls how that asshole's meaty hand had looked, locked around it. Something heaves powerfully in his chest at how strange it is, to be in the wake of a moment at which they have never been more alive, so soon after death nearly claimed them.

"Yeah," she rasps, but he is not comforted. He cannot quite believe the frenzy that had overtaken him, a ferocious drive as blinding as what he experienced on the battlefield, spurring him into desperate action. He wasn't a virgin anymore. The one thing he had always known, with absolute certainty, would never happen to him, had happened. And it had all been over in moments.

He is abruptly overwhelmed with loathing and disgust for himself and shifts quickly back. Amber starts, plunges a hand between them to grasp his softening cock and holds the condom in place and he huffs out in frustration that he couldn't even think of that as he pulls out of her, his cheeks suddenly hot, his throat tight. He dares a quick glance at her and sees she's biting her lip, a little crease between her brows, and feels sure he hurt her as he left her body and burns with shame and anger.

Amber's expression is detached and indifferent as she twists the end of the condom into a knot and disposes of it into one of the diaper bags she keeps in her backpack. Embarrassed, he hovers on the mattress, the worn cotton of the cheap sheets that dresses it sticking unpleasantly to his sweaty legs, his cock slowly retreating back into its sheath. He glances towards the window; the sun has risen and he will not be able to leave until nightfall. The room is already oppressively hot and there is nothing in here but books, and a stereo, a mattress and the two of them.

He looks back at her, sees she is partly turned away from him, pushing back strands of sweat-slicked hair over her ear, her arms so thin, her small breasts and bare belly the only starkly white parts of her undecorated by the relentless freckles that spatter the rest of her skin. Her nipples are unexpectedly large and pink, his gaze drawn back to them despite himself. She hasn't looked at him since he moved. And again there is a lump in his throat as his muscles twitch with the yearning to take her into his arms. He'd wanted her so bad, he wants her still, but now he's fucked it all up completely.

"I'm sorry," he says again, before he's even aware that he will.

Finally she's looking at him again, and her eyes are stark and huge. "What for?" she replies simply.

He would swear to god his heart actually stops.

What for? For fucking everything. For being the reason she was kidnapped to begin with. Nearly fucking killed. For the sick sense of ownership that gripped him the second the last one of those thug's bodies hit the floor and he looked at her, pale and impassive and alive because of him. For losing his fucking mind with lust and forgetting how fragile and weak she is, crushing her beneath him, hammering into her without any thought for how much he could hurt her. For rushing through it, for being a fucking kid, for not being able to hold back. For not giving her anything back, for not knowing how to. For not even caressing her, too desperate to get off and too scared of doing something wrong.

It's beyond words – or at least beyond _his_ ability to put into words – so all he does is stare dumbly back at her, his eyes burning and that horrible yearning like a gnawing ache in his chest.

And suddenly, Amber's expression floods with understanding, she blinks rapidly and painfully crawls over the mattress to him, and presses her mouth to his in a kiss so sweet his knees abruptly turn to jelly and he is flooded with delicious, delirious sensation that tingles right down his body and through his tail so that his cock nudges against the slit of his cloaca, heedless of his humiliation and his cluelessness and his shame. He wants to kiss her back, but her mouth is so small and so soft and he doesn't think he's quite figured it out yet, how to kiss her without sucking her lips in between his own, or slobbering all over her in a way he's damn sure ain't sexy.

Not that he's banking much on him being sexy at all. But even still.

Amber pulls gently away, sitting back on her haunches and blinking at him. So close, he can smell her keenly – her hair, and flesh, and the visceral scent of _her_, and it thrusts him right back into the memory of what she felt like around him, of the taste of her sweat and spit, of her breath heaving in hot gusts against his tingling flesh. Of how it felt to shove inside her, the warm, wet parts of her, her mouth, and…

His tail is suddenly throbbing again, spots dance in front of his eyes and it doesn't seem to matter how badly he must've fucking sucked, because he wants her again, and even as the impulse beats in him, his gut slithers with shame and guilt. Because he's obviously a fucking animal with zero self-control. And like she's gonna want him to touch her again, after that joke of a performance.

Amber sniffs, wipes at her nose with the back of her wrist and turns to fumble a pack of cigarettes out from under the mattress. The flame from the lighter sparks fire in her reddened eyes and he is captivated by her, all dishevelled hair and bruised, lacerated skin, her tiny, slender frame with its countless freckles kneeling naked in this dingy little room, surrounded by a riot of graffitied walls. She seems at once both ethereal, and impossibly earthly, so intrinsically belonging to this sordid world that it's as though she's some urban sprite and he feels himself flush dark at such sentimental musings, and blames his light-headedness and exhaustion after the horror of that endless night and its too-brief morning.

Amber looks at him again, exhales a stream of smoke that fogs the air around her head and only heightens her otherworldly quality, her swollen lip quirking in a little smile that seems almost shy.

"The next time will be better," she says. "It always is."

All he can do is stare at her, hardly comprehending the implication of the words, even as his ego bruises and his hopes flare.

"You wanna go again?" he hears himself say before he can stop it, stop the stupid goddamn words in all their cracked and hoarse disbelief, betraying him utterly.

She's suddenly eyeing him warily, a defensive hardness settling over her features. "Don't you?" She sucks back on her cigarette, crossing a skinny arm over her breasts.

"Well – yeah," he rasps helplessly, and his heart picks up, drumming a staccato beat against his plastron. He wants to, badly. Almost more than anything else. A taste was not enough; all it had done was whet his appetite, sharpened his need. She's sitting there, hair tousled and eyes all hard and brittle, scowling at him with that one freckled arm concealing her tiny breasts in a painfully touching way that makes him want to pin her wrists to the mattress and sink into her, over and over.

Except – he has no fucking clue what he's doing and that first fervent, hasty effort couldn't have done much for her.

"But – " he starts, hesitates, cos he doesn't want to admit it out loud. Even though she's gotta know.

She glares at him, takes another hard draw of her cigarette. "But?"

Because fucking her was good – good for him, anyway – but he thinks he wants more. Because as corny and pathetic as it sounds to his own blunt mind, he thinks he wants to make love. And that's just fucking stupid, because he doesn't even know what any of this means yet, and he's always rolled his eyes and scoffed at such sappy shit. _And_ he has no fucking clue what he's doing.

Then a stream of blood oozes from one of her nostrils and pools at her lip.

Abruptly, he realises just how fucking banged up she is and another torrent of guilt floods him because he didn't even _think_ about that and what it meant, how sore she must be, how he should've insisted on her going to an emergency room. Truth to tell, all he could think about was how hot she looked, all mussed up and bruised, like every mark on her was another crack in that flinty exterior so that all her raw and tender spots gleamed through. How the heady rush of his victory made her seem, in all her unmade glory, his to claim, and how delirious the shudder that ran through him at that thought was, some dormant bestial instinct stirred. How despite how frail and broken she seemed, those pale blue eyes still shone with defiance and resilience, and what a turn on that was to him when he was still high on bloodlust and triumph, juxtaposed against her miserable thinness and her obvious vulnerability. Even though her loss was inevitable, she wouldn't have gone down to her captors without a fight and he feels strangely proud of her for it, and his desire is stirred again, as is a flood of tenderness that mingles with the silent self-recriminations that hammer inside his heart.

And he realises they are both filthy, and covered in blood.

This is something he knows how to do.

He swallows hard and meets her eye. Amber starts when his huge hand cups her cheek, his thumb swiping away the blood so that it smears and stains her skin, and the guardedness in her stony gaze is chased away by a funny sort of a look; surprise mingled with yearning and fear. He supposes that it's not any weirder a hardened junkie street walker could look that way than it is a violent and unsentimental mutant turtle could feel as nervous and wound up with longing as he does then.

"But we gotta get you cleaned up."


	4. Chapter 3

He takes the packet of baby wipes she fetches from her backpack, and she submits and shivers as he starts to clean the many and varied scrapes and cuts she has endured through all the wretched evening. Almost immediately, she wishes she hadn't. It's undoing her, this painful tenderness, as he cups her face in one huge hand and, more gently than she thought he'd be capable of, carefully smudges away the blood. His green eyes are vivid and he smells of blood and sweat. A lump is constricting her throat as she gazes into him, and her heart just won't stop pounding. She blinks and swallows against the tide of emotion that threatens to erupt, then presses her eyes shut as damp cotton methodically, softly swabs the aching points of her. Sensations come alive beneath his touch and soon she is more aware of her body than she has been in years; it's a mess of stinging, cringing, throbbing fever and he's being so goddamn… it feels like he could… no one has ever taken care of her like this and abruptly she tastes bile in her throat and has to fight not to push his hands away.

Why did it have to be like _this_? She wants them to just be fucking already. For it to be easier.

She lifts her hair from her damp neck and winces. She wonders what will happen now with both of them so awkward and trapped in a hot, empty room with the sun beating mercilessly beyond, with all that they have shared palpable between them. When he is so scared of his own inexperience and she is terrified of any vulnerability. All she sees behind her eyelids is that moment after he came, when he pushed himself up and looked down at her. When she gazed into his eyes, so vivid and alive with feeling, and set in a face that is so absolutely not human. And she knew nothing could ever be the same again.

Even thinking of it as his calloused, scarred hands gently tend to all her battered parts causes her breath to rush from her in a great torrent that leaves her lungs flattened and dry.

And she opens her eyes again and looks at him, at this creature who is not human, and remembers that it was her who made him stay. When he would've turned away and left, no matter how furiously his desire raged, she had bid him stay. Because with that strange and awful night still echoing in the rattle of her bones and the throb of every torn muscle, she could not bear to face the savage dawn without him. The nearness of her own death urged the strange suicide of inviting him into her body and now she doesn't know how to stop him from going much deeper. Despite all the promises she made herself in a thousand powerless childhood moments, finally she has been unmade. Is being unmade still with every tender gesture as he cleans her wounds and examines them, gently arranging her limbs, and she can see the way his eyes flit over her nakedness as he works and she cannot think of a time she has ever been touched with such kindness. Something so immense wells in her that she thinks she might suffocate with it.

Her hand is pressing abruptly to his plastron then, leaping there of its own accord, and his hand stills on her arm, near her breast, as she looks at him, the domed green head and the broad, snubbed snout with its intent and heavy expression, the bony plating that covers his front and the shell that just barely rises over his shoulders. Her head reels, her gut lurches and she can't breathe, spots swim in front of her eyes.

Then he lifts his gaze to hers and their eyes lock.

She remembers his eyes after he killed Rex; glassy and remote, frighteningly cold, staring at her dispassionately.

Now they are soft and bottomless, the vulnerability in them so raw it hurts to see. He wants her so bad and he's so scared and it's more than desire there, and that tremendous realisation silences the morning so that for a moment it's as though they have stepped out of time and space. And her heart beat rises and thuds so that she feels her ribcage echo with it, with the terrifying awareness she wants him just as bad.

Her hand smooths across the hard, textured surface of his plastron and again her heart skitters to be reminded of all that this is. She's really not sure she's okay with this but she can't let him go either. The nearness of his bulk and strength, the hardness of his muscle and the intense, masculine scent of him seem to anchor her to the world; he's so absolutely alive and she is alive because of him and after all these years of sordid indifference she finds herself suddenly so badly wanting to revel in the perfect beauty that is being alive and in her body, and her body in the arms of a mutant turtle who is her fucking hero, her only ever hero.

But this callous warrior who had so brutally murdered men in front of her, in such a way she knew he had done it before and expects he'll do again, is quaking in fear at the thought of making love to her. And she realises that he probably never expected anything like this would ever happen to him.

He's not alone.

Everything she's feeling, the giddy rush of desire, her thudding heart and fluttering belly, the hum between her legs and the horrible, helpless impulse to cling to him and never let go, are sensations she thought long ago lost to her, and she wonders if he realises – if he can possibly know – she's terrified too.

There's nothing about it that isn't huge, isn't incomprehensibly enormous, so she dives forward and again their mouths meet in desperate yearning, fumbling and awkward, their tongues lapping and twisting, his mouth closing over hers and sucking it into his as they strive amidst the headiness of their passion to fit them together. They tumble back onto the mattress and she whimpers into his mouth as shooting stars of pain careen through her body and he's tugging his lips from hers, staring at her with wary, concerned eyes, a killer's eyes, a monster's eyes and she can see herself reflected in them, pale and ugly and wretched, and she looks for all the world like a monster herself.

But they are not monsters. They are just two terrified children carefully holding each other, naked and battered under the raw light of an indifferent morning.

Then she hears herself say, her voice raw from the abuse her throat sustained when she was being throttled to death:

"I have no fuckin' idea what I'm doing either."

He stares at her silently, his brow puckering slightly, a defensive little sheen glazing the green of his eyes.

And heat collects in her cheeks as she realises how ridiculous she must sound, twenty years old and a hooker since she was fourteen.

She snorts and tears her gaze away from his; even that little movement causing a racket of pain in her bruised neck.

"I haven't had real sex in years," she hears herself say, and her throat throbs under the effort. She thinks about what she's just said and realises she cannot ever remember a time she was a virgin and her heart painfully folds. "I don't think I ever have."

Then she remembers the freedom she felt that long ago summer's night beneath warm, sharp rain on the highway, accepting a crumpled and sticky twenty dollar bill and knowing she would never, ever have to go back, that she could smudge away the stain he'd left beneath a thousand indifferent strangers until it was utterly buried.

Raphael is gazing at her solemnly and with enormous tenderness, cradling her head against the unyielding muscle of one arm, the hand of his other resting with conspicuous lightness at her hip. She remembers again how he easily killed for her, this inexperienced boy of eighteen who is now too scared to touch her.

And even though there likely aren't any mysteries about her body to him, at least as far as the basics go, she doesn't really know the first fucking thing about what he's got going on, except for the brief glimpses of something dark and glistening and staggeringly inhuman, and how absolutely he'd filled her. She's still the one with all the experience and he will wait for her to act, oblivious in his apprehension and naivety that nothing of the thousands of times she has fucked has prepared her for this.

And she realises, as much as her gut churns and her knees are jelly against the mattress, she has to take charge, and it makes her terribly wistful, and yearning for a time when she was more innocent, a time she can't even remember and isn't sure ever existed.

It would be easier for both of them just to fuck again, to get caught up in the brutal and breathless rush of pure carnal need, have it out in sweaty, frenzied moments. Easier for him, when he doesn't know what the fuck he is doing otherwise. Easier for her, when she won't have time to think too much about what he is. Easier, altogether, so that neither of them risk too much the danger that making love means.

Except she knows she wouldn't be satisfied by that. She thinks he won't be either.

"Show me what to do," she whispers, and smooths a hand back over his cheek, making herself feel the leathery green skin, making herself stare into those fearful, fierce, green eyes. "Show me how you work."

Those eyes widen as he comprehends and she feels him recoil slightly. Though she had hoped her words would build confidence in him, they've had the opposite effect – he probably didn't need reminding of this critical difference between them. And now she's reminded him she's all too aware of it too. He starts pulling back and, in terror that she might be about to lose him when she's got nothing else to lose, nothing else to buffer her fearful heart against if he goes, she grasps at one of his huge hands and puts it between her thighs.

She hears the sharp catch of his breath in the moist heaviness of the humid morning, and his hand stiffens beneath hers as the calloused fingertips come into contact with her softest flesh. His eyes bore into hers and she meets them unflinchingly, grips his hand for all she's worth and holds it there, though she knows it would be nothing to him to break her grasp. After an endless moment she feels him relax, and though his hand is enormous, powerfully muscled, could easily, effortlessly crush her own slight one, he doesn't resist as she guides it so that his fingers can explore her, gliding through slick folds soft as velvet for all that the rest of her is so bony and dry. She is raw and tender from the rape despite the precautions she had taken, and sensitive from the ever prickling desire that has been steadily growing, piquing anticipation, only teased by their first frenzied tumble, and his touch heightens it further still, prompting a moistness at the centre of her that is exciting and strange. Jesus, it's been so long.

A moment later she feels something hard and wet nudging against her thigh and a sudden bolt of adrenalin sets her heart racketing as she realises what it is.

She can barely breathe, there on that musty old mattress in the bare and muggy room with its graffitied walls and exposed floorboards. With the painful intimacy of his hand between her thighs and his erection against her leg, she naked and bruised and in the arms of a mutant turtle who is a killer, and only eighteen, and looking at her like she means something, like she possibly could.

And he's her hero, and they're alive and somehow, in all the world, they've found each other, a freak and a loser who are unmaking what it means to be young and falling in love.

It's the nauseating terror of that realisation and all its enormity that compels her just to fucking _deal_ with this, in the only way she knows how. With wretched determination, she sits up and lowers her head to his lap. Without pausing to look at him properly or fully comprehend, with a lump in her throat and her heart a painful flutter, she takes him into her mouth.

The noise he makes as her lips glide over the head of his cock is choked and desperate, and she can hear how he strives to stifle it, so much like herself her heart hitches. He's huge, so wide she feels the corners of her mouth strain against their limits and the flared head of his cock ends in a tapered point that nudges against the back of her throat. She knows the trick though, and forcibly relaxes before she can gag, snorts in air through her nostrils and concentrates only on slowly, gently, carefully sucking him as he forcefully smothers moan and suddenly grips her thin shoulder with his powerful hand.

He abruptly lets go when she mews in pain, his hand fisting helplessly into the mattress instead as she tenderly sucks him, ignoring the variety of aches and pains this movement flares in all the places she was bashed that night that brought them to this moment. That night that is ever retreating rapidly into the past. Raphael lets out a shaky breath and beneath her palm she can feel the cabled tension in his thigh as she sucks him off, can feel how intensely he is holding back – from thrusting, from making a sound, from betraying what this feels like for him. But his cock swells in her mouth as she continues to work him, gentle and passionately, and his breathing is heavy.

His taste is distinct, but not unpleasant. She braces her hands on either side of his hips, increases the pressure of her mouth around the head of it cos she can barely get anymore in, feels her eyes prick with tears she refuses to shed for how sweet and terrifying this moment is. She's not sure she's okay with this, but she wants him to know she wants it anyway and sucks him fervently now, faster and harder. Raphael lets out a short, helpless groan and she feels him throb powerfully inside her. She's suffused with a sudden quiet joy to be giving him pleasure like this, and it's something she's never known before. Something she didn't know she could.

Suddenly, he's pushing her back, extricating himself with a sharp inhalation sucked in through his teeth, turning away from her with a grimace contorting his features and she remembers again he is only eighteen, and practically a virgin. Her lips are wet and her jaw aches and she kneels on the mattress and watches him as he silently strains to get control of himself and there's something kinda sweet and nice about it, to think he got that excited over her, when he's her hero and she's nothing but an ugly, miserable bitch.

Then he's looking at her with eyes seeming like green fire in the sweltering shadows of the dingy room, and she's holding her arms out to him, passion making her voice tremble: "C'mere, baby."


	5. Chapter 4

Raphael crawls quickly across the mattress to her as she lays back down beneath him and her thin body is sweat soaked against his plastron as they kiss. For a moment, he forgets himself and engulfs her tiny mouth with his. The blowjob had nearly finished him off for the second time in as many minutes and even now his cock twitches against her slack thigh, wet with her saliva and his own fluids. It hadn't just been the blinding pleasure the pressure of her mouth had given him, it was that she had done it at all. Done something that he had played in a thousand lustful fantasies, always underscored with frustration and bitterness for how absolutely hopeless he was sure they had been. Raphael slips an arm around her back, crushes her to him as he fights against the burn behind his eyes, the way his heart heaves and gasps in his chest.

Suddenly he remembers how he'd been poised to go, to walk out on her after she'd been brutalised and nearly killed, how he'd been ready to leave her alone with the clammy, empty day, bruised and bleeding, with only her memories for company.

And she'd given him a fucking blowjob.

He breaks the kiss and she licks her lips as they look at each other. Her pale, speckled, bruised face is raw, her expression startlingly open and her grip on his shoulders is tight enough to smart. It seems to him that, however world-weary and cynical she might be, right then she is terribly vulnerable in spite of herself. He wonders if she's aware of it, and if she blames him.

He swallows hard, falls into the ice blue of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he says, for the third time, his voice rasping and unfamiliar in its suddenly broken sincerity.

She understands him, and her expression suddenly cracks and her eyes flood and then she is pushing her face into the damp crook of his neck, her raw fingertips digging hard into his muscle, her sudden hitching breath a tug on his heart with every gasp. And he is compelled to continue.

"I woulda stayed, just if you wanted. You didn't have to – "

"Fuck you, you asshole," she interrupts him in teary fury, looking at him again, her eyes red, her cheeks splotchy. "I wanted to fuck you. Okay? Just fucking deal with it cos it's fucking done now."

For a moment, he cannot speak, doesn't know what to say. It feels like he's fucking up at every turn, but she hasn't loosened her grip on him. He's pretty sure if he does say something, it'll be the wrong thing cos that's the way it always is. What the fuck is he even doing? An uncomfortable swell is suffocating his chest as he shifts off of her, onto the mattress beside her, the hot cotton clinging to his body, sticky with sweat. Amber watches him go with suddenly hard eyes, her mouth tightly set, lays stiff as he settles, lets her hands drop to her belly where they curl limply. He's fucked up. A lump forms in his throat and he struggles to swallow it, fights against the ache that abruptly splits him.

He wants so badly to hold her, to touch her, caress the slight curves and rough points of her fragile body, but he's profoundly aware of how slight she is, of how hard and heavy he is by comparison, of how he has no fucking idea what he's doing, whatever greedy assurance he's imagined in his desperate fantasies. Of how bruised and sore she must be, of how absolutely she has allowed him to invade her body even still, the heartbreaking generosity when it was _her_ who was attacked.

And he's the one getting off.

His cock has softened, retracted back into his body as his plastron seems to tighten across his chest, filling him with a sharp pain as he gazes down at this strange, quiet girl who has upended his entire reality. He is filled with the urge to kiss her, to pull her to him, nearly does and then hesitates. His hand dwarfs her hip, her narrow body is shadowed by the bulk of his, her skin is terrifyingly exposed and he has no fucking idea what he's doing. It paralyses him, this uncertainty, when usually he is in absolute command of his body. To feel so clumsy and awkward now, to not know how to proceed when she lies beside him, giving and giving and giving, is making him desperate, his throat and chest strangled with an unease he recognises as guilt.

He swallows again, feels his eyes smart, looks down upon her achingly defensive face, and somehow finds his voice: "What do – do you need – somethin'?" He trails off, his blood a beating storm of fury because he can't even ask a fucking question, because he's a stupid fucking kid, because he doesn't fucking _know_.

Abruptly, Amber sits up, fumbling for the soft pack of cigarettes discarded by the mattress, her hair falling forward to conceal her face. "Nothin'," she says sharply and he stares at her slim back, her bony spine, helpless and devastated.

He wonders if he should apologise again, but it seems pointless. Again and again his eyes trail over her hunched form, the beautiful long strands of red hair, damp and slightly frizzing in the humidity, the layered freckles that cram her skin, her skinny limbs and red raw fingertips as she reaches her arm out to ash the cigarette on the floor boards. He is suddenly gripped with impossible tenderness for her as a tumult of all that they have experienced together roars through his mind and finally he reaches forward, acting on nothing but impulse as he gently takes her shoulder and turns her towards him.

She glances at him only briefly before ducking her head, once again hiding behind red hair, but the expression he glimpses wrenches his heart. Desperately guarded yet somehow exposed, like a cornered animal entreating in submission, ready to fight. He pulls her to him and she folds, murmuring thickly against his plastron so that he can feel her lips vibrate: "I fuckin' said I can still want things for myself."

He wants to say _well yeah, but how the fuck could you want me?_, but he doesn't. That's giving away too fucking much. And anyway, she's done enough for him now. Too much.

It feels good to hold her, to have the slim, slight bundle of her wrapped up in his arms, pressed gently against him, to feel like he's actually fucking doing something for her, after all that's passed and all she's done, and he wonders why it took him so long to figure it out. She turns more to him, her arms snaking round his sides, her hands grasping the rim of his carapace, holding him tightly and he increases his grip on her in kind until it seems like he might pull her inside him and she would go without a whimper. His face presses into her hair. It smells of smoke and sweat and shampoo, tickles his mouth and cheeks and then her lips are at his throat and she's shifting, her small breasts dragging up against his plastron as she lifts a leg to sling over his, then the other, straddling him and he can smell her keenly, the visceral scent of her. Again something dangerous and hungry stirs inside of him, mingles with the tenderness that strums his heart, an intoxicating mess of feeling that makes him feel slightly lightheaded as she raises her face to his and kisses him. The scent of her prickles something at the back of his mind, some dormant animal part of him that comes abruptly, shockingly to life and floods him with knowledge that is purely instinctual, that his conscious mind could never have allowed him to recognise: she's aroused, she wants him, she's into this. Into _him._

And he's kissing her back, all clumsy, fierce enthusiasm and beneath his rough palms those small breasts feel sweet and her ribcage is delicate and her hair caresses his scarred knuckles as his hands roam her body and he feels his cock again slide out of his tail, sensing the nearness of her groin and her breath is hot and desperate as she tugs at his carapace.

A carnal surge pulses through his groin as he lowers her to the mattress again, and he grits his teeth and struggles to keep hold of himself. He doesn't want a repeat of the first time. If they move too fast, if he gets too carried away, he'll humiliate himself again and he wants this to be something for her, the way it is for him. He breaks the kiss again, props himself up on his hands, gazes down at her as she stares back up at him with solemn, quiet eyes, her lips swollen and flushed from the pressure of his, and thinks about all the fucking shit they've been through together.

Yet somehow he never thought it would bring them to this. Even though he wanted it – and he knows now, he's wanted it a long, long time. He wants to say something to her, but he's not even sure what. He never knows what to fucking say. And the more it means to him, the less he knows. How fucking useless.

Amber reaches up between them and her thin fingertips stroke his cheek. In some echo of movement, he lifts a hand and pushes tangled locks of red hair back off her bony shoulder, behind her ear. And his heart swells and tugs painfully with how much he wants her, wants to be with her, wants to know her and it's completely fucking terrifying. Something has started here, something immense and impossible, something that will change everything.

Or maybe it started before this. Maybe they have been building to this since that night he first happened across an indifferent junkie, about to get her throat cut out, a lone freak looking for a way to be part of the city. He would never have dared think it, before now. But maybe it was always inevitable.

Amber tugs her lower lip between her teeth, brushes her knuckles across his jaw, looks straight into him. "Fuck me," she says. And he realises, whatever else happens now, nothing can stop this.


	6. Chapter 5

She kisses him again, and the wideness of his mouth, the texture of scales against her lips, remind her he is not human, not at all, but she wants him all the same, and it's been so long that she's wanted anyone that the feeling alone is a miracle that makes her profoundly uneasy, that makes her want to run, hit another highway with the sun at her back and endless miles unfolding before her.

Instead she hooks an ankle around his knee, grasps the rough edge of his carapace, tugs at him urgently until he relents and allows his weight to press down carefully upon her and she clenches her teeth against the pain that echoes in her joints, that flares across the tender and battered soft parts of her that hold the memory of that long and awful night she had been so sure would be her last. But for all that he is heavy and rough and abruptly edged, she has to be beneath him, has to have him on top because she is never on her back at work, and this isn't work and it can't be anything like work.

She can feel his cock pressing against her again now, can feel the tremor in him as he holds back and she knows he's afraid it will be like the first time and wishes she could tell him it doesn't matter; it will be that way for a while and it doesn't mean anything. What means something is that they're together, that they're overcoming whatever fear and uncertainty that consumes them, whatever doubt or shame to be consumed in each other and that's more - so much more - than almost anyone can say.

His mouth is huge and cavernous and wet as they frantically explore how best to make their mouths fit together, his plastron is crushing her breasts and she clings to his shell mostly to make herself get used to the fact it's fucking there. But the way his cock presses into her thigh, the soft grunt as he shifts and it slips against her cunt, the beat of his breath against her, the way his powerful hand suddenly slips through her hair to cradle her aching neck, it sends a rush of blood to her groin that quickens her breath, evokes an urgency from her loins that prompts her hips to lift, to rub herself against him and he groans straight into her mouth so she swallows the sound. Breathlessly, she fumbles for another condom, reaches between them to roll it down his length. She can feel the sheets plastered to her sweat-soaked back, the way her hair clings in strands to her neck and she laps beads of perspiration from around Raphael's mouth, and urges the head of his cock to nudge inside her with a heel pressing hard into the rough of his shell.

And they are looking at each other, looking into each other, inches away, unbearably close, holding their breath together as he slides in deeper. And it seems they have fiercely barred all vulnerability for so long that, stripped so raw now, it leaves them utterly helpless. Amber swallows and feels a flutter of panic as she knows he can see straight into the heart of her as easily as she does him, and there's absolutely nothing she can do about it.

"How do I feel?" She doesn't know why she asks; scarcely recognises her own voice, tiny and bruised.

He blinks, licks his lips. "Good," he says finally, and as brief as his reply is, she hears all he isn't saying in the raspy tremor of his voice.

Then his head falls to hers and they kiss again and she feels the shivering rush of endorphins flooding her body in a great wave and she's forgotten it can be like this, that feeling can be natural and helpless and unforced and she gasps against his mouth as he starts to move and every inch of her is profoundly, vividly alive.

All the bruises and scrapes and aching bones and strained muscles from the night's horror has made her body a throbbing racket of pain, but washing over it, threading through it is the bliss his thrusts are causing, the feel of him stretching her so that she's moulded to him, around him, by him and she remembers the haunting fear in his eyes when he tried to ask if they'd raped her, how calmly she had denied it even as her heart beat a torrent in her chest. She knew he could not have stood the truth and there wasn't any more he could do. He couldn't undo it and he couldn't avenge it and he could not have understood that it was just one more out of dozens over the years; she stopped counting long before she ever ran away from home. And she knew it would eat him alive. Anything he can do, he can do right here, joining with her because they both want to, because they need to, or they'll die of it.

And she thinks she might've, if he hadn't stayed, if he had shaken off her hand and made it out the window and gone, left her behind to smoke, and ache, to remember and long for him. There would've been only one way to quiet the clamour that rattled within her, without him there to buffer it. And the strangest thing of all is that right now she should be thrumming for it, unable to think for want of it and all she can think of, all she can feel, is him and what they're doing. She realises this is the first time in years she hasn't been paid to do this, that there is nothing in it for her except the chance to be so close to him she might slip within his skin, their every breath a fervent exchange until she is giddy from it, until she could swear she does feel the edges of her flesh merge with his.

And all at once she comprehends what it means to make love, to crave someone so much she wants to fuse with them, feel them in her marrow, bind them in her blood, have every pore clogged with his sweat and it's so insane it should be like this, in this stuffy, barren room on a callous summer's day with a fucking mutant turtle.

She wouldn't even be here at all if it weren't for him.

She wants then to cry so bad, she knows if she starts she may never stop.

Raphael has stopped thrusting, is lifting his weight from her so that abruptly she breathes easier as he props himself up on a rippling forearm, his other hand still cradling her neck. His eyes shyly meet hers, a look so foreign to him she feels a prick in her heart. Then his huge, leathery hand is cupping the side of her face and such concern and tenderness wells in his gaze that she aches to see it.

"You okay?" he murmurs.

And she realises she has been clinging to him, fingers digging so hard into his arms she can see the dark grooves they've left behind, gnawing the meat of his neck as her chest heaves with dry sobs.

For a long moment she cannot reply**, **her mouth dry and her heart in her throat as she looks up at him, at the care and tenderness she cannot remember ever having seen before, in all her short life, on the face of another human being. "Yeah," she replies in a voice she doesn't recognise, and realises how strange she must seem to him now, now that he's been inside her body and she lies unmade beneath him, unable to affect dispassion or irony or anything at all to make her seem like herself as he's known her. Until now, as they return from the end of the world. And she wonders if he realises how enormous this really is and how it is steadily unravelling her, thread by thread.

She can feel the tension in the press of his limbs, the rigidity of his cock inside her, but his knuckles graze her cheek so softly and his eyes are grave and searching. She's not used to _this_ sort of intimacy, the moments between, with someone she wants to be with, hasn't faked it for, and doesn't want to leave. She has to fight the urge to push him away.

She thinks about saying something. Something like _I didn't know how much I wanted this and now that I do know, I wish I didn't. _But it's too late and saying it won't change anything, won't accomplish anything except break his heart and her own too, probably. She wishes she didn't know, but she does and so she knows, too, that she can't let him go. That she can't face how it will feel to not be with him, like this.

So she says nothing, just slips her fingers up and over his cheek, beneath the slash of red over his eyes, pushing it up and off his face until for the first time she sees him absolutely bare.

He stiffens as it falls away, presses his eyes shut for a moment and her fingertips skim back across the broad snout, scar tissue near his mouth abruptly smooth and there is something so heartbreakingly vulnerable in how he looks at that moment that she is soothed. Then he opens his eyes again and rolls with her, carries her with him as he settles on his side, still entwined together and she winces with each jolt of pain and hooks her leg over his thigh and pulls herself closer, even still, feels the pulse of him deep within her, how she stretches around him easily now as though they have always been like this.

Almost helplessly, his gaze drops to flicker over her naked body and she wishes she were more to look at. Bony, bruised and scarred, so many of the soft and paper thin parts of her flesh marred by livid track marks, she can't imagine she's particularly appealing but his eyes are roaming over her small breasts and concave belly and pubis, to where they are so explicitly joined, like he might never get to see her like this again. Something about it touches a soft spot, long buried, deep inside her, and she's ridiculously, fleetingly pleased he likes looking before she forces such childish vanity from her heart. He's a mutant turtle who expected to stay a virgin his whole life while human pussy was thrust into his awareness from all directions. Of course he likes looking at a naked woman in his arms. Doesn't change how ugly she is, how wretched.

The smile that ghosts his mouth is wry when he lifts his eyes to hers once more. "I'm an asshole," he says abruptly, the gruffness of his voice seeming loud in the still room.

She shrugs, lays her head to rest on the curve of his bicep. "I'm a cunt," she replies indifferently and he almost laughs.

"I mean," he begins, grits his teeth and shakes his head, unable to say it. But then, one huge, calloused palm is suddenly over her tiny breast and she understands. He pets her uncertainly for a moment, before drawing his hand back so that the pad of one massive thumb can trace her nipple and it hardens as a rush of feeling flares across her skin, gathers in her cheek and so immense is the sensation that she doesn't want to believe it's happening. Raphael watches wonderingly as he again gently, slowly, swipes the flushed and erect peak and something between her legs tugs; she's still there, still with him and she watches as a small furrow collects between his brow as though he's fighting some internal battle, oblivious to the one she's warring.

Suddenly, he's kissing her rough and sloppy and his hand is searching between her legs and she cannot stop the gasp she breaths into his mouth as he brushes sensitised flesh, still humming with the yearning for satisfaction, prompting her to tighten around him. Heart hammering, breath short, she takes his hand and guides him, the calloused pad of his finger bringing a sharp and immediate pleasure that is irresistible as much as it is confronting. Though she has always hated to be watched in this moment of such intimate exposure, though she's permitted it only a mere handful of occasions and regretted it every single time, his touch has enthralled her, the promise of encroaching bliss overcomes her doubts, and what does it matter after everything else, after all. Her head tips back against the cradle of his powerful arm and she breaths in hard, gazes into his face and all its foreignness that is suddenly wonderful, that leaves her in no doubt about who she is with as her conscious mind drifts, urged insistently away by the blissful sensation that steadily rises to overcome it.

And then it's upon her in a torrent of delirium. She bites her lip and her eyes squeeze shut and her hips lift of their own accord, her nails biting into the back of Raphael's hand. She chokes back on the moans that struggle to rip from her throat, gritting her teeth against their push and then she hears his name, whimpered helplessly and his mouth presses against hers and swallows the sound.

She lies breathless in his arms for an eternal moment and when she opens her eyes finally and sees him gazing captivated at her, she does not regret. Her throat is tight and her eyes burn and she feels sick amidst the enormity of what they've done and how exposed she has become, like he's peeled back flesh and the fine spokes of her ribs to all the raw meat within, but she does not regret.

**ooo**

_Thank you for reading. Part Two will commence next week and after that I aim to publish a new chapter on a weekly basis. Your concrit and feedback is most welcome. I never expected that I would tell Raphael and Amber's story like this, but it's something I badly want to do now. It's completely self-indulgent but it means a lot to me. If you are kind enough to give this story your attention and time, I am hugely grateful and I hope that you enjoy it. _

_My enormous thanks to my baes, winnychan and gladrial10 for their incredibly helpful beta reads, and to kameterra whose feedback on my first draft of this part was invaluable._


	7. Part Two: However Long I Stay

**PART TWO: However Long I Stay**

**ooo**

_Whenever I'm alone with you_  
_You make me feel like I am whole again_  
_**\- Lovesong, The Cure**_


	8. Chapter 6

He stares out over the river, hands curled into fists by his side, and wonders if he'll even be able to look her in the eye when she arrives.

Inside the suit he is sweltering, beads of perspiration trickling down his neck and arms and thighs, and the thick, lined material is soaked, clinging unpleasantly to his skin, but he'll be damned if he takes it off before she gets there.

The summer's night is balmy, the view from the rooftop – their rooftop – perfect as the river stretches miles in either direction, bordered in thousands of blazing lights. Mikey always says it looks like some sorta fairy land but to Raphael it looks exactly like what it is: a city, thronging with life, drama and violence.

Usually when he is in this suit it's so that he can thrust himself into the middle of it all, all that drama and violence, and feel like his life means something. But the sun has not so long ago set on the horizon and it is not in blood that he intends to find solace tonight.

Despite the clinging oppressiveness of the suit he shivers, presses his eyes shut behind the helmet's visor as vivid memory floods him, that long, torrid day on a battered mattress, fucking over and over again until between the friction and the slick heat of their bodies they had seemed to meld.

His pulse spikes and a bolt of lust twists in his groin. But it's immediately snuffed by a wave of nerves that make his hands even clammier, his breath short.

Maybe it was just going to be that one day. One dreamlike day in the wake of a nightmarish evening that had shredded their inhibitions long enough for them to join in a sort of childlike ecstasy. By the time he was kissing her goodbye from the window frame and she was starting to twitch with the need for something he couldn't provide, he had grown almost comfortable with this new and impossible reality.

Funny how a little time with his thoughts and the loneliness of his room, unable to share his revelatory experience with the brothers who seemed daily ever more strangers to him, could fan the flames of self-doubt.

After all, as changed as he felt, nothing else about the world had.

So he stands there, in his armour, and waits for her on their rooftop. The same rooftop that only a short while ago – a month, maybe? – they had sat side by side on a sunken, moulding couch and jumped to feel their thighs brush. A ninja and a hooker, a freak and a loser, two nervous kids.

He inhales and his breath is muggy in the confines of the helmet. Usually the suit feels liberating, enables him to stride freely along the streets, the reputation he has built with a thousand crunching fists and brutal, bone-snapping kicks making his passage unchallenged, even celebrated – provided he avoids the cops of course. But now he feels like he's drowning and smothering at once and it is only through sheer stubborn force of will that he doesn't rip the fuckin' thing off.

Out on the river, the low horn of a ferry echoes across the water and he tightens his fists and wonders what the time is.

Maybe she wasn't going to show.

They'd agreed to let a night pass before meeting again. It had seemed an eternity to wait as he had slipped into the sewers in the sultry twilight, each step away from her feeling like years to travel, but he had enough presence of mind to know his absence that day would have been noted. He wanted to avoid questions he couldn't – wouldn't – answer. For the first time in months he'd slept a night through, collapsing into his hammock almost as soon as he was home, the events of the previous twenty four hours catching up with him in an overwhelming torrent. Come the next evening, he had answered Splinter's summons with furious trepidation, but the old rat had wanted only to watch television with him and Michelangelo had joined them with an almost incredulous delight. Only Donatello had kept his distance, radiating hostility from behind his cordon of computers, and though it had made him edgy, he ignored it. _If he's got a problem he can come face me about it,_ was the only thought he deigned give the matter. Mostly, he'd wondered about Splinter, who seemed somewhat out of sorts, his ears drooping and his breathing shallow. He'd half expected his father to – who knows, _smell_ the difference on him – but the rat had seemed content to quietly watch the movie with his sons and Raphael had silently consented, perturbed by Splinter's lassitude. The movie had not been to his tastes and inevitably his thoughts had wandered back in time to Amber's red lashes fluttering against her freckled cheeks, how she'd slung her bony ankles up over his shoulders so that his mind had gone utterly blank with pleasure, the way that strange human conceit of twining tongues and pressing mouths together had become more intoxicating the easier it became. Inevitably, the recollections had become too overwhelming to bear and he'd beat a retreat to his room and jerked off for the first time over memories rather than impossible fantasies, and if Amber wasn't like any one of his dream girls had ever been, she had been real, and she was her, and all his.

Raphael sighed as his thoughts sent a tremor through his tail, swallowed hard and tilted his neck to the side so that it cracked and caused a fresh wave of perspiration to break out across his brow. Times like this, he really wished they were all fully cold-blooded. Real reptiles didn't sweat.

Then again, real reptiles didn't have strung out junkie girlfriends they were terrified about seeing again, either.

In the end he'd been slightly relieved for the extra night. The more he remembered about that strange, sweltering day, the more embarrassed and awkward he had felt. How painfully obvious his fumbling inexperience would've been, from not knowing exactly where to touch her, to slurping all over her fucking mouth those first few kisses. The first humiliatingly brief time. How he had been unable to suppress a churr – loud, desperate, ear-splitting – the third. And almost worst of all - how naked every emotion must've been on his face.

It hadn't seemed to bother her – not any of it. Not even the sight of his dick, and he knew _that _was different enough to humans to freak one out. But beneath the freckles and the bruises and the sallow pallor of her malnourished skin, there had been nothing but a serene acceptance and she had gazed into his eyes with a quiet intensity that had scorched.

But maybe it was all bullshit. After all, she was a pro.

Behind him there is the scuffling echo of old boots against metal and he turns around towards the fire escape, hears her raspy voice quietly curse and cannot help the grin that runs up his mouth even as fresh adrenalin spikes his bloodstream.

She grasps the leather clad hand he proffers her, and he hauls her up the rest of the way. She's light as a feather and not for the first time he wonders how it is he didn't crush her, break her in half. He sets her on the dusty concrete of the rooftop and she shakes her hair over her shoulders and tilts her head back to look at him through lidded eyes, cool and aloof as ever. He stares back at her, knowing all she can see is the expressionless and indifferent surface of the helmet and is glad he stayed in the suit, now that she's before him and all he can think about is how she looked naked, her eyes pressed shut, whimpering his name as she came.

Then Amber is lifting a fresh cigarette to her lips and lighting it as she eyes him, the tiny orange flame illuminating the red of her hair where it brushes her cheeks, the lividness of the bruises that mottle her neck and jaw. He can see that her pupils are pinned and knows better than to be disappointed.

"Take that fuckin' thing off," she says dryly, taking in a long, slow drag.

The only reasons he can think of to refuse, he doesn't want to admit.

So he lifts massive gloved hands to the helmet and tugs it free.

Even the still summer air is deliciously cool against his sodden flesh and Amber seems more brilliant, standing there in a short striped cotton dress he knows once belonged to a child, one arm crossed over her middle, smoking easily away like it's just another night on earth.

At the sight of his face, her gaze softens and she ducks her head a little, and if he didn't know any better – didn't know she was a cynical street walker with a foul mouth and vicious worldliness – he might've said she was feeling as shy as he was.

She steps over the quiet rooftop to his side, her boots scraping against the dust and pebbles, and his pulse increases and he wishes to Christ his throat didn't feel like he'd been swallowing sand. For a moment, interminable and suffused with anxious anticipation, they simply stare into each other's eyes and the pounding of his heart drowns out the world.

Then she closes her eyes and presses her mouth to his, even though he knows he's still drenched in sweat and must reek. Despite the foul taste of nicotine, her lips send a warmth flooding through him that is not at all unpleasant and he kisses her back and there is nothing else but them.

He takes off the suit and they sit on that sagging old couch and look out across the river together and when their thighs press he feels a tantalising jolt that is promised fulfilment when her hand then brushes his knee, and his skin prickles. He lifts a muscled arm around her shoulders and she leans in against him and her smile is coy and so unexpectedly bashful that he's not really so nervous at all anymore.


	9. Chapter 7

"Hey."

Blearily, she looks over to the window frame to see him filling it, all dark muscle and intense eyes, and something giddying and delirious rockets through her. It's not as sharp or immense as the flood that deluges her after injecting, but there's something about it that's warmer and more pure that makes her faintly uneasy even as she smiles at him despite herself.

"Hey." She lifts her cigarette to her lips and takes a long draw, the rough cut comfortingly abrasive as it billows into her lungs. The air in the bare room is still and dry, and she can feel the sweat beneath her arms and behind her knees, sees the sheen along his neck.

He drops lightly to the grimy floorboards, cracks his neck and rolls his shoulders and she feels a flush of heat in her cheeks, but gives nothing away.

"Take a load off," she advises him easily, nudging away with a blueish toe the scattered paperbacks on her old mattress.

But he's already fished something out of the pack slung over his shell and holds it up for her to see. It's a new latch bolt and a padlock, heavy and shining by the light of her shadeless lamp.

"Lemme do this first," he says, moving towards the rickety door with its sagging hinges and peeling paint.

A little smirk twists her lips and she looks back down, unseeingly, at the book in her hand. Well, that would explain why he's so early. Usually they don't see each other til towards the end of the night.

But last night – or that very early morning – after they'd fucked and were entwined together in the breathless afterglow, a fearful racket had broken out somewhere above them in the crumbling tenement; two men raging at each other.

Raphael had started upright, so fast her heart skipped, and hovered above her on his palms, every muscle tensed, his triceps like taut rope beneath her fingertips. He'd listened silently for a moment, green eyes intent.

"How many fuckin' people live here?" he'd finally said.

Beneath him, she'd shrugged, traced the corded delineation of his musculature. "Dunno. A few."

He'd glanced down at her sharply, as though her indifference was incomprehensible, then looked towards the door – which shut fully, at least, but had no lock to speak of, and the hinges were loose at the top. J-J had rigged the building for electricity and water, but everything else was up to the inhabitants to take care of.

Then he'd looked down at her again, face grim and sharp, and she knew exactly what he was thinking: _and you shoot up and just lie around here all day long._

Raphael fetches a screwdriver from the pack and gets to work on the hinges, replacing the rusted old screws with new ones, the shift and flex of his biceps drawing her eye again and again from the page of the Jackie Collins bonkbuster. She's pissed he didn't kiss her before getting to work, and the fact she cares is pissing her off too. Big fucking deal if he didn't kiss her. Big fucking deal he's got biceps cut like granite. Big fucking deal he's brought over a lock to keep her safe, like she hasn't taken care of herself just fine for six fucking years.

She feels her lip curl, urged by the sudden tumult of feeling, and shuts the book with a snap and drops it to the mattress; rakes red fingers back through her hair.

"So what's news?" she asks him, taking another long draw of her cigarette, scratching at the inflamed puncture marks that splotch a skinny foot.

"Since last night?" he grunts, as he marks out the points to drill holes on the door frame. "Don skipped trainin' again this morning, which means Mike did too. Splinter didn't seem to notice."

His voice is dark and resentful, but she isn't fooled. He's worried.

She tries to think of something to say around the draw of nicotine, the crackle of burning paper. She's got nothing.

"Give it time," she says finally, and then feels like an idiot, cos that's about the most useless fucking thing she could say.

Raphael is silent as he fixes the bit into the chuck on the portable drill he's brought. Then he hits the trigger and the burr of the motor fills the uneasy quiet.

Amber glances aside, catches sight of the remnants of her fix: the carefully capped syringe, the loveworn spoon, shrivelled yellow cotton. She just couldn't have been fucked to clean up right away and now he's here and it's a matter of time until he sees it all. Big fucking deal if he does. He knows the score. He's always known it, and it ain't her fucking problem if he can't handle it.

But the way he said his father's name, it plucks against something deep inside her, and she quietly reaches into the cardboard box of her clothes and tugs out an old pink jumper to drop on top of the mess.

Raphael has the screwdriver again and is fixing the latch bolt in place. She finds herself captivated by the intricate geometric grooves that pattern his carapace, finds her still-stoned gaze tracing them over and over, following the shallow paths they forge in that natural armour, intersected at several points by gouges clearly sustained in battle. Her tummy twists a little at that thought; at the image of cold steel striking deep, and she realises she doesn't even know if a turtle would bleed through his shell.

"There," Raphael says with gruff satisfaction, as he tests the lock, sliding the bolt into the keeper. It is embarrassingly bright against the dilapidated door, painfully out of place.

"My hero," she says dryly, the lightest touch of a tease in her voice. But as he looks at her with wry derision, their eyes lock and sudden heat burns in her cheeks. Her heart patters and he is still, and they cannot seem to look away from each other.

After a moment, she swallows, stubs her cigarette out on the grotty floorboards. "So do I get a kiss now, or what?" She doesn't look at him, but every inch of her tingles like she's dropped LSD.

He drops to his knees on the mattress beside her and she lifts her face to his and their kiss is soft, the scales around his mouth smooth, his tongue warm against hers, and again she is flooded with a prickling rush that is somehow sweeter than any chemical bliss.

When they pull apart, he raises a hand and tucks an errant lock of hair behind her ear, and her belly does somersaults.

He frowns at the book tossed by her side as he eases onto the mattress next to her. "Weren't you reading another one the other day?"

She blinks at him. "I finished it," she replies simply and something flickers across his eyes as he looks at the fat copy of _Lady Boss_, the spot she's earmarked more than a quarter in. Then his gaze darts up and slides uneasily across the books she's got stacked up against the walls in rows, a vertical patchwork of coloured spines, many of them split and crumbling, a few of them still bright, of varying sizes and genres.

"You've read all these?" he queries her curiously and she shrugs, reaches for another cigarette.

"Yeah. Cept for these – " she points to the volumes clustered in a loose pile on the mattress. " – actually, this reminds me I gotta go dump a bunch of the others." There's no point in keeping them, after all.

He's still staring at the fifty or so books she's gotten through in the last few months and she gets the feeling he's uncomfortable about something, a frown creasing his brow.

"_All_ of them?" he repeats himself and she discards her lighter on the sheets, holds her cigarette loosely between her lips as she twists her hair up into a sloppy knot on the base of her neck. It's too fucking hot.

"Yeah," she replies diffidently, the cigarette bobbing as she speaks around it. She contemplates changing the subject. Fuck, maybe he can't read. She'd never really thought about it before. Not that she gives a shit, but he's clearly bothered somehow.

Raphael glances at her, eyes the books again. "How many you read? Total?"

She supposes she could lie, but she thinks he'd know it and would feel worse. "Thousands, I guess." She keeps her tone carefully flippant, scratches her neck.

He looks at her sharply, mouth slightly open and she can tell he's intimidated. She shrugs.

"Homelessness is fuckin' boring, you know?"

There's a guarded sheen to his eyes, but one brow ridge is slightly cocked.

She plucks the cigarette between two fingers, raises her own brows lightly back. "Well? There's not a whole lot to do. You just wander around, or hang out someplace. I mean, you can't even sleep the time away, not really, cos someone's gonna come move you along. Plus you gotta keep an eye out. I dunno. I always liked reading, I guess. But mainly it's a good way to kill time."

He rests a forearm on a crooked knee, somewhat relaxed by her pragmatism, smiles wryly. "You couldn't just go to the movies?"

"I do that too," she says, nodding and flicking ash onto the floorboards. "Used to a lot when I wanted to sleep. Now I got this joint." She grins and holds up her hands grandly to indicate the shabby room, her first place of permanent residence since she walked out of a share house three years earlier.

Raphael snorts. "A dayjob, a home. Look out, you're practically a normal person."

His voice is thick with irony, but she feels her smile fall and her blood chill as his words sink in. He's right. She works two days a week at Thistleways. Staying some place ongoing. Has a fuckin' boyfriend – and it's all his doing. Somehow, he started it all. Nothing's been the same since he slammed into her world and saved her life.

He's even put a fucking lock on her door.

She has to fight the impulse to get up and run.

"I remember," Raphael blurts suddenly, and she looks up at him as waves of unease roll through her gut. It's his turn to shrug in response to her enquiring look. "When we were really little kids, we didn't really have any one place we stayed. Master Splinter would go out scavengin' when we were too little to go with him. He'd find us a safe spot and leave us there – for hours, sometimes, until he found some food enough for all of us – us kids, that is." He pauses, arms slung over his knees, enormous hands dangling between them, his brow heavy and his mouth grim. "Usually told us he'd already eaten. Took me years to figure that one out." He chuffs, scratches the back of his head. "But I was never the bright one."

Amber looks down at her lap where her pink plaid skirt droops between skinny thighs, and imagines it: freakish children and their lost parent, scrounging to survive far below the city. A pang strikes her heart and spreads out across her chest in a painful sigh.

"Anyway," Raphael continues. "I remember. We'd play and shit, but it'd get real borin' after a while. It got different when we found the lair – the first one – and set up there. Plenty to do, fixin' the joint up. And we got toys and stuff. Shitty, chucked out ones, but still. And that's when he started trainin' us." Then he wrinkles his snout. "And teachin' us."

Her doped mind is conjuring a thousand pitiful, touching images as she listens to him and picks at a toenail, peeling away the skin that frames it. She remembers the expansive, sophisticated underground chamber they called home, the carefully gathered furnishings and lovingly constructed equipment, the motley personalities of four brothers and their aging parent displayed in a thousand offhand touches. From five freaks of nature, outcast and confined to the sewers, they had built a home – a real home – brimming with love and happiness and comfort. And bile rises in her gorge as she remembers where she came from, how she had been given everything a child could ever ask for and none of it had meant shit; it was just a bribe for her silence and her compliance and in the end it made her so sick she had walked away, straight onto the streets.

"Let me guess," she says hollowly, then clears her throat and tries again: "You didn't like being taught."

She glances up at him and they grin at each other. The sight of his smile somewhat calms the thud of her heart.

"The trainin' – " he continues. "I ate that shit up. But the lessons – " he shudders and she returns attention to her toe, carefully peeling a fold of skin away, leaving behind a splotch of red. "Sensei found a buncha books. Thought we should know shit." He snorts. "I never saw the point. Leo and Don lapped it up though. Sometimes I think he only started it all for Don's sake and just roped the rest of us in so we wouldn't feel left out. Leo, course, he just wanted to be Mister Perfect any old how."

Quietly, Amber thinks Splinter's reasoning for providing lessons to his sons was not just for Donatello's benefit. The rat's boundless love for his surrogate children was profound and that he would overcome his own considerable obstacles to give them an education – again, something clamps down on her heart and her throat tightens unbearably. _No._ She fucking won't do this. She tears away a long strip of skin from around her cuticle, a thread of blood left in its wake.

Suddenly, Raphael's huge hand is clamping gently around her own. "Don't do that," he says quietly, and she stares down at the green skin, the play of veins ridged against it, her whole arm stiffened with the urge to jerk away from him. But his grip is sure and she knows he won't budge. After a moment, she relaxes, and he releases her. Something is knotting, coiling in her chest, something unbearable. She wants another hit and her gaze falls edgily on the rumpled pink sweater. She realises how little sense it makes, that a sweater should be jumbled up beside her in this heat, an endless stifling summer.

Instead she reaches for the bottle of gin near the mattress, takes a hefty swig so that the burning pool of it in her belly is all she can feel for a painful moment. "So, not a big reader, is that what you're sayin'?" she manages to say, forcing playfulness that sounds as strained as her heart feels, and offers him the bottle.

When he takes it, she suppresses a smile: if he's drinking, he'll stay with her the whole night now, and she's glad. She wants to drink, and fuck, and forget.

"Do I strike you as the intellectual type?" he says lightly, but there's something else there too, something affected.

She chews her lip, puckers her brow as she looks at him. "What's intellect got to do with it?" she challenges him. "Lotsa dumb people read books." She shrugs, starts searching for her cigarettes. "Lotsa smart people don't."

"So I ain't even doin' dumb right, now?" he thunders, immediately on the defensive, the bottle arrested halfway to his mouth for a second swig.

"That's not what I mean," she fires back, rolling her eyes as she fumbles a smoke from the pack. "I mean whether or not you read says nothin' about how smart you are. Who gives a fuck? Only assholes."

She's working too hard to reassure him. But as exasperated as she is, the way he assumed she could only mean he was one of the dumb ones has plucked a tender string in her heart. Somehow, she knows: it hadn't come easy to him.

"You read all the time!" he flings a hand towards her stacked books as she lights up, and again she rolls her eyes, tips her neck back.

"I _like_ readin'," she retorts dryly. "It's okay not to. I only read trash anyway. And you got more education than me," she adds, puffing smoke into the dim light of the room.

Raphael blinks; she can see the thought hadn't occurred to him before now. She reaches silently for the gin bottle and he passes it back to her, their eyes briefly locking, then darting away. She wants him close now, wants the feel of his muscled arm around her shoulders, his hot breath against her scalp when he nuzzles into her hair. But she's got no idea how to get there.

She looks over at the solid, bright lock on the shitty old door and thinks about how she'd be dead by now if it weren't for him. How a whole buncha folks would be, had he not chosen to risk it all by doing something about it.

"Anyhow, there's a fucktonne of shit you're good at I could never do," she says after another scorching gulp of gin. "You don't see me gettin' into a tizzy about it."

Raphael snorts, glares at her, then finally chuckles a little.

"And I only read so quick cos I do so much of it. Pretty sure you couldn't do all that leap tall buildings in a single bound shit without a little practice."

"A little," he admits, his mouth quirking up at one corner and she feels herself flush as a touch of swagger returns to his poise.

And she can't help it, she reaches out and brushes a hand over the curvature of his biceps; a tingle running through her as her fingertips trace the hard muscle, her cheeks hot. He glances at her and then looks away, practically shucking, but she can see he's pleased.

"My hero," she says softly, so softly she's pretty sure he won't hear her, but then he's turned to her with blazing eyes and is pushing her back down on the mattress and she's flooded with a delirious torrent of sensation as their mouths meet, part and fervently pull against each other, those massive arms engulfing her until all she knows or feels or sees is him.


	10. Chapter 8

Raphael scuffs a toe against the dusty cement, cracks his knuckles and glances out to the city below.

It's a raucous Saturday night in the redlight district and the streets are thronging with people in search of salvation in sin, drawn out by the sultry evening heat. Hustlers, con artists, dealers, hookers and junkies – some of them all that at once – litter the block in indifferent confidence, assured of their rule of this grotty kingdom through which a thousand tourists from nicer neighbourhoods and nicer cities wander, and gawk, and get fleeced in ways they don't notice until they're long gone.

He can see Lenny, fat, black and white-haired, leaning in the doorframe of his Vintage Vinyl shop, porkpie Stetson at a jaunty angle atop his head, Jimi Hendrix blaring with the mingled accompaniments of car engines and drunken chorusing. Sapphire, a Trinidadian trans woman who elongates her six feet of height in six inch thigh high stiletto boots, has claimed her usual spot down on the corner where she sways and grinds for the passers-by, her platinum weave flying as she turns. Bengy is there, early teens now and more beautiful than ever, a fancy phone up to his ear, fancy gold rings on his fingers, fancy sneakers on his feet as he weaves in and out of the crowd to whatever drop off his bosses have assigned him this time. His future is set.

All the familiar faces are out tonight. The only one missing is the one he's come out to see. Wisp-thin and crammed with freckles, stupidly long red hair that drifts down her back like a burnished waterfall, dressed always in clothes rummaged from the kid's bin at the Goodwill, Amber usually takes up residence outside the record store where she sings and dances and stomps skinny legs in battered old boots, seeming to draw the men to her like a pied piper of vice. He'd been late getting there; Saturdays were big business for the Nightwatcher and his police scanner rarely stopped crackling. Most nights if he didn't force himself to switch it off, there was no way he'd be able to stop.

But it had been two nights since he'd seen her, and the usual guilt that made his hand waver as he reached for the power switch was suffocated beneath a keen anticipation he wasn't entirely comfortable with, but couldn't resist all the same.

She'd been there when he reached the rooftop, but she hadn't been alone. Another girl, trembling and hysterical, had been with her, yammering frantically in words Raphael was frustrated he couldn't hear whilst Amber had gripped her forearms and stared into her eyes with her own ice blue ones, clearly trying to calm her down.

After a few agitated minutes, Amber had slung an arm around the girl's shoulders and started leading her into the Red Eye diner, casting a frustrated look up over her shoulder to the rooftop where he helplessly watched them.

A short while ago he would've pulled up on his bike, garbed as the vigilante who was making ever increasing waves across the city, right in front of her. Then, at least, he would've known what was going on.

But that was no longer an option. All he could do now was pace the rooftop, with the night breeze warm against his skin and the cacophony of city life burbling at his ankles, and wait.

He cracks his knuckles again, tightens the knot of his mask as he spins on his heel, glances over to the skylight that glows warm yellow beneath the film of grime that coats the glass, and the flower that lies on top of it.

And again he is gripped by the inescapable notion he's completely fucking stupid.

He can't imagine what possessed him to bring it with him in the first place. April had been arranging a vase of them as he sat at her kitchen table and tried to work up the guts to talk to her about all the shit that was happening at home, about how off Master Splinter was and how ineffectual Don was being at running the team, and how he got it that Don needed to focus on working his crawl of a job, but he didn't get how Don had shut down his offer to lead training with a curt 'I don't think so' and a scornful once over so that it had taken all of his willpower to prevent himself flying across the room at his brother – the same brother he used to marathon video games and soup up the van with – and how fucking unfair it was. And how much it had hurt, when he had sacrificed so much pride to even make the offer in the first fucking place.

But it had been a long time since he'd come to April to confide, and it had never been easy anyway. It had been childish desperation that had first found him, a frustrated, furious wreck on her window sill, some eight months after they had met and the first real changes in their lives had begun to inexorably unfold. He wasn't even sure what had brought him there, except it had been raining and he was too pissed to go back home. If she was surprised to see him – the turtle who had been the most distant and least friendly – she hadn't let on. Just let him in and offered him a soda with the smile that always pierced his heart in such a way he would scowl to hide it. And before he knew it, he'd been pacing her kitchen and shouting his many and varied grievances at her walls.

He'd had no idea, just how much he had held strangled and smothered inside of him, until he'd started. And when April had stood up from where she'd been silently listening to him at her grotty old formica table, stepped over and enfolded him into her arms, he had shook with the force of his emotion, sobbing into her scented bosom and clinging to her like she was the one stable force in a universe that had never intended to account for him, that churned chaotic and heedless of how his meaninglessness devoured him from the inside. He hadn't cried in years – not in _years_ – and though at any other time the mere _thought_ of being so weak was unbearable, that if he'd had any notion at all he would've wound up crying in April's arms he would've turned heel until he outran all feeling and all weakness beneath the stinging pelt of the rain – right then, with the warmth of her slender arms encircling him, and her smock silken against his cheek and the spicy scent of her perfume suddenly comforting, he had felt only safe. He knew April wouldn't tell, wouldn't judge him, wouldn't do anything but be there in a way he had never experienced before and hadn't even realised he'd needed. And whilst he'd worked hard not to make a habit of it, it wasn't the only time he had gone to her.

But he's no longer a kid and it had struck him it was time to man the fuck up and just deal with his shit. So he'd sat at her kitchen table and watched as she arranged brilliant orange flowers in a vase and felt himself choke on all the things he wanted to say, and wouldn't.

April hadn't pushed; it wasn't her way. She'd asked after Splinter, and queried about Mikey and how the Cowabunga Carl shtick was going, even though Don must've been keeping her updated, and he'd answered in his sparse, direct way. But he had seen her green eyes flick to him, soft with concern, more than once.

She was surprised he refused the beer she offered; it wasn't like he drank a whole lot normally, but he never refused one at April's – especially considering it was a bit of a secret arrangement between them. Leo – Splinter too – would seriously disapprove. But he already knew he'd be putting on the suit that night and didn't want anything – even one measly beer – to affect his judgement and reflexes. The lift of her fine red brows when he waved the proffered bottle away reminded him of just how many more things he was concealing from his family, and he wondered what April would think if he told her about Amber.

And his eyes had fallen on those unusual orange flowers again, where they sat in a green lusterware vase that had belonged to April's mother, and a wry smirk had tugged at his mouth. _"Hey Ape, I've got a girlfriend now. She's older than me, got a police record a mile long and is a hooker. Oh yeah, and she's a junkie who can't make it through a night without shooting up at least three times. Any advice?" _Yeah. Right.

Not even April could understand.

He left when she went to the bathroom, knowing she wouldn't be surprised or offended to find him gone. He had trouble with goodbyes and for all that he hadn't disclosed that night, he still felt singularly exposed beneath her discerning gaze. Tucked carefully into his belt was one of those blossoms with its long, tapered, curling petals, their vivid orange colour speckled all over in little black spots.

Somehow, it had survived the night in the storage compartment on the bike, only a little wilted and battered by the time he finally retrieved it in a smarting fist, and went to the rooftop for their rendezvous. He hadn't allowed himself to think about it, to stop and consider his actions, but waiting for her on the roof had given him plenty of time and he had inevitably concluded that he was a total fucking idiot.

Jesus, why the fuck would he bring her a _flower_ of all things? A fucking flower. That would be dead the next day. Was already mostly dead, suffocated in the seat of his bike, its delicate petals bruised by his own clumsy handling. He hated this kinda shit, however you looked at it. Seemed to him, most so-called 'romance' consisted of humans doing shit not because they wanted to, but because they thought they should. And for what?

The working girls always laughed when the clients brought them flowers. He'd overheard them often enough. Seen enough hothouse bouquets trampled in the gutters. God, what would she have thought?

Anyway, he was a mutant turtle and she was a junkie hooker. Romance? What a laughable fucking notion. It was ridiculous, and he was stupid. The whole thing was stupid – his cheeks burned to recall the thought that had prompted him to reach over and pluck one from the vase – that it _reminded_ him of her, of her hair and her freckles and – oh fuck, thank _Christ_ she hadn't been on time, the humiliation would've been more than he could stand.

In a furious moment, he steps over to the crate, snatches up the blossom and hurls it across the rooftop. It's too light to travel far, descends limply and unsatisfyingly to the crusted dirt and pigeon shit and lies in a crumpled heap, its stem broken.

He stares at it, panting, arms flexed and hands pressed tight into fists. How fucking stupid.

Behind him, something shifts in the ambient sound coming from the laneway, a change his skills have been honed to detect, and he knows she's ascending the fire escape now. He cracks his neck, then his shoulders, then strides over to the escape and looks down to where he can just make out her lithe figure wearily clambering upwards. When she's in reach, he leans over the ledge and lifts her the rest of the way, not failing to notice how she pants and wheezes, her frail ribcage feeling delicate as origami beneath his grip.

"Thanks," she grins when he sets her down, already fumbling in her purse for a cigarette. "Sorry I'm late."

Already that disconcerting warmth upon sight of her, at being close to her, has pooled out across his chest, making him smile at her despite everything else, making him itch to reach out and brush that awkward lock of hair back over her ear, the one that's still growing out from where it was hacked off weeks earlier, an uncomfortable reminder that yet somehow makes her almost adorable.

"No problem," he replies, resisting the urge to touch her. "Looks like some shit was goin' down."

Amber rolls her eyes as she puts the cigarette between her lips, lights up. "Fuckin' newbies."

"Anythin' I can do?"

She puffs a cloud of smoke from the corner of her mouth, tilts her head back and eyes him amusedly. "Naw. Nothin' like that. She just can't handle it."

He's itching to kiss her, but doesn't want to come off needy. But she hasn't made a move yet either, and it's putting him a little on edge. Maybe she doesn't want to kiss him tonight – maybe she's starting to have second thoughts. It's been two nights since he last saw her. Who knows how things might've changed, with all that time to think.

All he's thought about is how much worse everything would be – Leo gone and so far away, Don fully embracing his inner asshole, Splinter seeming so indifferent to it all – without her.

Amber ambles over to the skylight, drops her backpack to the cement, eases down onto the edge, cigarette drooping between her lips, crossing one skinny leg over the other. The flower lies, unnoticed, a few feet away. He wanders over to the roof ledge, looks over to contemplate the street that intersects Redfern. It's a similar sort of a sight. A strip club, its blinking neon sign post declaring the promise of _GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!_ vibrates with the beat of the music within.

"Some of these girls shouldn't be workin'," Amber continues, oblivious to how hard he's struggling not to go to her, yank her into his embrace, how much it's bothering him she doesn't seem to want to touch him tonight. "But they don't got a lotta other choices. And it messes them up. Y'know?"

He didn't 'know', but it's the way he'd thought that it was, the way the whole world told him it had to be, before he'd met Amber. He turns back to look at her, sits up on the roof ledge and props one foot up. She seems sharp tonight, clear. She's wearing a tiny skirt with ruffled tiers in pink, orange and yellow teamed with a Sailor Moon tee shirt, the freckles that litter her thigh dark beneath the refracted glow of the countless lights that burn across the city, her red hair illuminated in the glare from the skylight. She lifts her hair away from her neck and he remembers vividly how it feels beneath his hands, how she shivers when he kisses her neck, and has to swallow hard.

"They don't know how to – how to separate themselves," she's continuing, kinda manic, and he realises she's high all right, probably coke, cos there's no way she'd be sharing so easily about the subject otherwise. "They make it all personal. Not their fuckin' fault; it's how we're taught to think, 'specially girls. Hard thing to break free of, that kinda brainwashin'. But it sure makes it hard to fuckin' work."

The wind swirls over his shoulders, carrying with it the scent of the pizzeria that's open late below. He eyes her bony legs, her skinny arms and the inner elbows of both livid with purple and red tracks, thinks about how fragile she feels to hold and the uncomfortable protective urges it rouses in him. Then he wonders if she's had a busy night.

"Ever like that for you?" he queries her, he can't help it.

She snorts and exhales in a jet of grey that billows up into the night.

"No. I learned how to compartmentalise before I learned my times table. That's a skill you don't forget. Just don't ask me what three times nine is." And she laughs, a grating howl edged in hysteria.

It bugs him she's so high, and he shifts agitatedly on the ledge, the cement rough against his leathery skin. Bugs him how blasé she is, though he isn't willing to examine why. The job is just something he has to accept. But for all his brain gets it, his heart – and his dick – are not so easily reasoned with.

"How d'ya learn somethin' like that?" he grumbles and she suddenly snaps up straight, glares at him with wide, suspicious eyes, black in the dim light.

"Whaddya mean?" she demands with the ready temper of the coked-up. "None of your fuckin' business. I'm just good at this shit. You even know how busy I am?"

He knows.

She leaps to her feet, starts striding the rooftop, and his eyes fall of their own accord to where that stupid flower wilts pathetically in the shadows.

"I'm fuckin' unbeatable," she declares vehemently, her hair fanning out around her as she whirls, seeming ridiculous and harmless in her pastel children's clothes and freckles, like a half-assed candy raver rebelling on the weekend rather than the hardened street walker she is. "Half those cunts down there don't know how I fuckin' do it, when they're prettier and got bigger tits and still gotta hustle harder than a fuckin' politician to rake in half what I get in a blink. You know how I do it? Cos I'm not even there! I'm not even fuckin' there! Nothin' gets in here – " and she gestured with a bony finger to her head. " – or here." Then to her heart. "Not a fuckin' thing, Raphael. None of it's real. None of it means anything. Because I'm not there." She strides over to him where he sits, glaring at her, her face suddenly illuminated by the neon of the strip club sign. Her pallor is sickly blue beneath the endless clusters of freckles washed black, her pupils are huge, consuming her eyes which are enormous in her thin, angled face so that this close and in this light she seems almost alien. Her lips are dry; she's been chewing at them and black threads of blood spread across their purple hue. He's almost angry for some reason he can't discern, but for equally undefinable reasons he wants desperately to silence her in his embrace. Her fervour is unsettling him – there's something else going on, but he can't begin to imagine what it might be. And he doesn't understand what makes him then at once want to walk away and hold her close, to never ever let go. "That's what I know how to do. That's my gift. Not everyone can do it. You either got it or you don't. But if you don't, you shouldn't be in this biz."

Abruptly she steps back, dives into the Barbie purse that dangles at her hip and pulls out another cigarette. "But like I said, ain't always so easy," she mutters around it as she lights up. "Then bitchin' newbies wanna come cry on my damn shoulder, get in the way of my income, my date with my boyfriend. I can't fuckin' help them. You either got it or you don't."

Raphael is struck by another conflict of feeling; he wants to both shake her until her teeth rattle and kiss her until he can't breathe; he's absurdly pleased she'd think of their miserable little rooftop meeting as a 'date', that she's called him her boyfriend. But he's vaguely resentful too. Maybe cos, no matter what it is to her, it means something to him, and he knows the only outcome of telling her that would be a fight. After listening to her for so long, observing the lives of her peers, watching the streets, he gets it even if he doesn't like it, so there's also the disquieting slither of guilt in his gut. Maybe that's what it is.

Then something else occurs to him. "But you try, anyhow," he says to her.

And it reminds him why he decided she was worth it.

Amber is startled, steps back, blinks. "Naw," she drawls, shifting her weight to one leg, her other crooking at the knee, folding a skinny, splotchy arm across Sailor Moon saluting the world. "I just listen to them. Tedious as fuck, to be honest."

But he isn't fooled. He remembers the way she cried over a woman she barely knew.

He leans back on his hands, lifts his chin to stare at her where she scowls in the rhythmic blink of neon. Something flickers in her eye and she spins on her heel to wander over to the ledge, look out onto her beat. His gaze drops to the flower as she stomps past, her scuffed pink Dr Martens missing it by inches. He half-wishes she'd crushed it.

"Anyway, she'll be all right," she mutters, her hair gently lifted by a sudden rush of wind, cigarette smoke trailing away. "How you doin'?"

He thinks about Don shooting him down, how small and withered Splinter looked that afternoon, how long it's been since Leo's last postcard, and again his throat is choking on the knot of all he yearns to say. But she's already listened to one sob story tonight, and he's never been much for heart-to-hearts.

"Totally fucked up," is the best he can manage.

She turns around to him, her head cocked gently to the side, and even in the dim light of the rooftop, he can see she gets it, and he wishes she would just get the fuck over to him already. He doesn't want to talk, not anymore, even though he knows she'd listen and understand. Somehow, knowing it is enough, for now.

And, as if he'd spoken out loud, she lifts the cigarette to her lips, takes a draw, then nods at him, her pale red brows drawn thoughtfully together. "Whenever you're ready."

He's glad he's facing away from the pulsing neon as he swallows the lump in his throat and nods back.

She tosses the smouldering butt to the cement and grinds it under toe. "Anyway, what do – "

And his heart plummets as he realises she's caught sight of that stupid fucking flower.

For a moment, she just stares at it, and he can't look away, his plastron rising and falling beneath his shallow panting. He can see her brow wrinkle, the confused pout her mouth screws into, how she's trying to figure out how the hell some exotic flower ended crumpled up in pigeon shit on a rooftop, between them. Then she stoops and picks it up; the gesture exposes the crook of her elbow to him so he sees again the grotesque splotches and jagged trails that broadcast her habit and the flower sags pitifully on its busted stem in her hand and all he can do is watch her like a chump, his fingers curling into fists against the stone, his heart suddenly pounding, his mouth dry.

She straightens up, still gazing at the limp and faded blossom with a strange and indecipherable expression, and he can tell she's figured it out, and wants to just let himself tip backwards, straight off the rooftop, disappear into the street far, far below. Why hadn't he just chucked it over the fuckin' edge?

But then she looks up at him, and her eyes are brilliant and shining, and his heart catches in his throat. For a moment, she's impossibly beautiful.

She lifts the flower and tucks it in behind her ear, and he wonders if it's a trick of the unnatural and flickering light, the sudden darkness of her cheeks beneath her freckles. It doesn't matter; the way she looks, pretty and pleased and sort of surprised, once again causes that pleasant, discomfiting warmth to suffuse his chest, a tingle to unroll across his flesh and he's spoken before he can stop himself: "C'mere."

She doesn't hesitate and then she's in his arms and they're kissing frantically, fervently, beneath the relentless flash of a lurid neon sign and he's awash in a sudden, intoxicating rush of endorphins as her tongue twines with his and she presses her slender body up against his plastron. The feel of her, so fragile and pliant, stirs a furious care in him so that he holds her as tightly, as closely as he dares and she wraps her arms around his neck and there, in the middle of that city that endlessly teems, exists nothing else in all the world but them.

Later, she sits between his legs on the roof ledge and he wraps his arms around her nothing waist as they watch the world unfold below them.

"No one ever gave me a flower before," she blurts in a rare lull of traffic, when the streets are momentarily still.

But he's still embarrassed and doesn't reply. Seconds later, another rush of cars peel down the street, and she tips her head back to rest on his shoulder and he feels the fine strips of her rib bones beneath his fingertips and presses his mouth against her neck and she shivers. He knows the coke high would've ebbed away a while ago, but she seems content to stay put. The flower is still tucked behind her ear, wilting resignedly, and from time to time she reaches up to brush it with her fingertips and since she seems to like it, he figures it all turned out all right. Even if the whole thing was fucking stupid.


	11. Chapter 9

"It's not a fuckin' tunin' dial, baby."

She tries to keep it playful, but the calloused pad of his finger is fucking abrasive against her sensitive clit.

Immediately his face contorts with frustration and he yanks his hand back, sitting up and turning away from her.

She sighs quietly, rolls her eyes and runs trembly fingers back through her hair.

"I didn't say I wanted you to stop," she points out dryly to his shell where he sits facing the dark window, his head hunched, posture stiff.

"Well, I do," he throws back tersely over his shoulder, the bare bulb of the lamp throwing a soft yellow glow over the ripple of one arm, the curve of his shell. The rest of him falls in shadow.

The sheets are sticky and rumpled beneath her as she draws her knees up, rolls her head against the thin pillow. "Jesus, Raphael, do you expect to be a fuckin' expert straight off?"

He doesn't reply, but his shoulders rise and fall in a furious sigh and she knuckles her eyes, then fumbles for her cigarettes by the mattress.

"Here's the thing," she says, tugging one from the pack with her lips. "That thing you do, where you kinda jab at it for a few seconds then shove your finger up my hole? It just doesn't feel any good."

He twists towards her, fist slamming into the mattress, brow furiously knotted.

"I get it," he barks and she sits up quickly, pressing the base of her palm against her forehead as her head painfully reels.

"Just let me fuckin' finish, Jesus!"

He snorts, turns away again, arms slung over his knees. She sucks on her cigarette, absently rubs her shaved slit, the slick warm against her fingers. He's got her worked up enough that the abrupt denial is really fucking annoying and she doesn't have the patience to be gentle.

"Being fucked is fun, but you wanna actually get me _off_, you gotta not do what you think's gonna feel good for me based on what feels good for _you_."

He doesn't say anything, but she can see the tenseness in his shoulders, in the higher lift of his carapace. This is probably devastating to him, but she's fucking sick of guys who think rubbing her clit like it's a lottery ticket before jamming their fingers up inside her and poking around is gonna make her cum like crazy. She puts up with it enough at work, she shouldn't fucking have to with him. He can calm his fucking ego right down.

"I mean, whaddya think? You're the first guy who's ever got it wrong? Shit takes time. Do you act like this any time you don't get some fuckin' spinnin' kick shit first go?"

He shoots her an angry sidewards glare, his eyes glittering darkly, and she exhales a stream of smoke, watches it dance ghostly in the meagre pool of light.

"Right. 'Course you do."

"So what then?" he snaps, throwing one hand towards the air. "You want me to go?"

"No," she says irritably. "I want you to get back over here and finish the fuckin' job."

"Why?" he demands harshly. "I don't know what I'm fuckin' doin', right?"

Exasperated, she lets her head tip right back, eyes rolling over the gutted ceiling, exposed rafters barring inky depths. "How do you expect to fuckin' learn then?" Peevishly she presses her cigarette to the threadbare sheet, burning a hole in it. She lets her knees drop, crosses her legs, aware of the lingering need between her thighs and pissed off, cos she's still not used to feeling this way. "Do you want me to bullshit you, like you're some fuckin' trick? Would you be happier if I faked it?"

"No!" he counters defensively, still turned towards the window, his muscles all bunched up, so hunched his carapace practically hovers over his head. She knows that what he wants is just for her to nurse his pride a little. To tell him gently, in breathy words and cooing indulgence. But sheer, bullish machismo will never let him admit it.

"Good. Cos I'm fuckin' sick of fakin' it, Raphael. I don't fuck for free, you know. Not as a rule. I shouldn't have to perform for my fuckin' boyfriend."

She comes to an abrupt halt, only just realising how high her voice has risen, that she's panting slightly, her chest rising and falling. Something prickles at the back of her eyes and she takes a hasty draw on her cigarette before she can keep going, before she can tell him how weird it is that she even _wants_ to have sex, that she thinks about it, looks forward to it, enjoys it. She told him, months ago, in his sparse bedroom in that home far below the city, how fucking frigid she was and if he doesn't remember it, that's his own fucking problem.

"I don't want you to 'perform'!" He's turned back to her now, his eyes bulging with emphasis, weight propped on one hand, the other jabbing at the air to punctuate his words. His aggression dries her eyes and she stares right back into him. "I just – " He breaks off and she realises it's for the same damn reason, before he can say something that betrays him. He snorts and throws his hand up before letting it fall with a smack onto his thigh, shaking his head hopelessly.

Suddenly, she is sorry for not being gentler.

"None of this would be happenin' if I didn't want it to," she manages to say lowly, stubs her cigarette out in the circle of singed wood and ash by her mattress as he turns back towards the window. She props an elbow on her knee and lowers her head to her fingertips, not looking at him as she scratches her hairline. "Just maybe – think about what that means." Her throat is closing up in protest at this disclosure, her heart thuds painfully hard and her jaw is tight. It'd probably mean a lot to him if she said more – that until him, she _didn't _want it to. How she just didn't care. How it's been years since she even got off, how much he excites her, how she feels sometimes like she's coming back to life beneath his caress. Even when he's fumbling. But she can't. She just can't.

"Well, good," he mutters shortly, and there's a flare of fury in her chest, that he's thrown it back in her face like that.

Then she wonders what _he_ didn't say. Isn't saying.

For a while they sit in silence, while the distant sounds of the city night drift in through the window. She sits with her back against the wall and smokes, her shadow stretching towards him. He stares out the window, hands dangling over his knees, half out of the light cast by the battered old lamp. She lights another cigarette and thinks about telling him how much it means to her, to be real with him. How important it is that she can be.

He huffs loudly, scratches his head, turns back towards her.

"Okay," he grumbles resignedly. "Show me what to fuckin' do."

Truth is, she's feeling a little over it but there's no way she can say that _now_, not without completely shattering him. Her heart wilts tiredly. Fucking male ego.

If it was anyone else, she'd just say she wasn't in the mood anymore and let them feel however they want. But it's Raphael, so she forces a smile to quirk her lips as he shifts around in front of her on the mattress, his eyes dark, his face still but intent. She's jolted by the sincerity she sees in the grit of his gaze and she can't keep faking it. She doesn't wanna fake it with him, goddamnit. She doesn't want any of this to ever feel like work. It'll be the beginning of the end if it does.

But he's trying. He's fucking trying.

"Well. I _like_ being fucked," she begins slowly, figures she can stall a little 'til she works out how to handle it all. "And I like it rough – " she glances almost coyly at him sideways, smirks a little to see how hard he's striving to look stoic, though she knows that frank admission would've hit him right where it counts. "But – " she hesitates, trying to parse her thoughts. The truth is, she's only just starting to learn this shit about herself and it's daunting to share it, even with him. Especially with him. " - You gotta get me right up here first," she taps the side of her head, smoke trailing around her hair from the cigarette that smoulders between her fingers. "And that takes a softer touch." She looks directly at him and feels her mouth twitch. "But you get that part down and you can fuck me as hard as you like, as long as you like."

He's titillated but he's trying not to show it, his jaw tight but his eyes a little hazy, running up and down her nude figure as he absorbs her words. It's kinda sweet in a funny way, kinda annoying too. Not for the first time, she wishes she were a little less jaded. Maybe then all his clumsy jabbing and rubbing would be cute. Or at least she could be more patient with it. She rubs one eye wearily with bony fingertips that are icy despite the summer night, and decides she just can't be fucked.

"You're not gonna get me there just by fuckin' me," she continues bluntly. "That includes finger bangin'." She shoots him a wry little look, lifts her cigarette to her lips. "I know what kinda guy you are, Raphael. You wanna get in everywhere. You'd fuck my navel if you could."

He snaps to attention at that. "That's not – " he sputters indignantly, eyes blazing green fire. He stops himself, gritting his teeth and forcibly deflating. "I like other stuff too," he insists, his low voice startlingly unguarded so that she blinks at him, disarmed. "And I like – " his gaze breaks away from her, sidling uncomfortably across the far wall, graffitied figures sinister in shadows. " – when you – "

"When I cum?" She wants to tease him a little for his awkwardness, but her cheeks rush hot as she says the words and she glances down at her lap, to the bare space between the red curls that spring on her pubis and her cracked, calloused heel. It felt so intimate, suddenly. Usually when she talks about cumming, she's lying. She's not used to conversations about sex that actually mean something.

"Yeah," he says quietly and they sit there, not looking at each other. She realises how ridiculous this sudden bashfulness is when she's already fucked five guys that night and he's been out pulverising bone with his fists.

She drags her gaze over to him, eyes caressing the dip and curve of his muscular arms, running up his thick neck to his broad, inhuman face, thoughtfully concentrated. She wonders if his cheeks feel as hot as hers do, wants to touch him. He looks up then, meets her eye with his own fathomless ones and her heart starts pattering, adrenalin nervously streaming in her blood. If he touches her now, she could tell him anything at all and she's frightened suddenly.

"You watch a lotta porn?" she blurts before he can reach for her, and he blinks, his expression closing.

"Not a _lot_," he replies carefully, which could mean anything.

She shuts her eyes for a moment, before she can roll them. It's not like she gives a fuck. "Okay, well, way too many fuckin' guys treat porn like some sorta – educational resource. But porn is made for the viewer, not the participants." She tips her head back against the graffitied lettering on the wall, takes a thoughtful drag on her cigarette, allowing her thoughts to unravel, spill out her mouth. "It's all about what looks good to the audience. A fuckin' – heteronormative male audience. Totally fuckin' penetration fixated. And the… construction of sexual interaction in porn is totally fuckin' performative anyway. And it's like, this thing that is totally choreographed and artificial has become so pervasive it's normalised a performance of sex that has, like zero fuckin' application in a natural, spontaneous setting. So many fuckin' idiots just don't get it. How can they not get it? How fuckin' hard is it to understand that just because something looks good on camera doesn't mean it feels good to do?" She's on a roll now, and the further she distances herself in rhetoric, the calmer the fluttering rhythm of her blood stream becomes. "Then they wonder why they gotta pay a hooker to fake it all the fuckin' time. Except they're stupid and arrogant enough to think their wives are all frigid and hookers are all nymphos - "

"Alex, d'ya really have to do this _now_?" Raphael breaks in, his massive fingertips working his forehead. Startled, she blinks rapidly and looks at him where he sits before her, a faint furrow on his brow, his eyes sharp with impatience.

"What?" she snaps, feels herself flush hot and he rolls his eyes slightly, grimaces.

"I'm a _little_ distracted," he points out roughly, the jab of one hand indicating her nakedness and she almost throws her cigarette at him.

"I thought you wanted to learn!" She stubs it out viciously on the wall instead, rubbing it right into the graffiti until the butt is bent and twisted beneath her thumb.

"I wanted to be shown, not get a fuckin' lecture!" he counters brusquely, his eyes bulging as he leans forward and she glares at him, her lip curling in a venomous sneer. "None of that gender war shit applies to me anyhow." He sits back, glances moodily away, back towards the window and she feels the dull heat of her pulse as it quickens.

"It applies to you if you wanna fuck me right!" She's not quite yelling at him, but her voice echoes around the bare room, cruelly rings back at her. She's never cared if anyone fucks her right before and that's always felt like power somehow. Now it's his.

He snorts like a bull. "I didn't even understand half those fuckin' words you used!" he snaps, the fingers of his hand curling as he flicks it towards her. "You know what I _would_ understand? If _you_ made a little noise now and then!"

It hits her so hard she sits back, her head meeting the wall with a dull thunk. She hadn't even realised she'd been leaning forward. She sucks in a hard, heavy breath of air through her nostrils so that her rib cage swells, her eyes so wide they ache, her mouth in a tight, pinched line. He doesn't seem to realise what he's said, his teeth gritted and his brow heavy as he glares at her, waiting for her to counterstrike.

Without taking her eyes from his, she searches for her pack of cigarettes in amidst the tangle of sheets and pulls it into her lap, withdrawing one with her other hand. "I didn't realise I was such an unsatisfyin' experience for you," she keeps her voice low, so it doesn't shake. Nicotine-roughened, it's practically a growl.

"I never said that, Alex," he replies with testy emphasis, eyes glittering in the glow of the lamp and she lifts the cigarette to her lips and follows it with the lighter, spinning the disc with a sharp snap. "Though you good as did." His voice is dark and bitter.

"You don't want me to be real with you, you can call me Amber." Her own is quietly icy, disregarding his accusation, folding an arm across her lean waist. She's desperate to pull the sheet up and cover herself but she won't let him know how badly affected she is. She won't. She can't stop thinking about the little foil wrapped package of smack in the old tin lunchbox by her bed, Hello Kitty's blank-eyed stare innocuously guarding it. Her heart skips and patters as she visualises the syringe plunging into her skin, her nipples hardening as the flood of numbing euphoria that will follow rushes her memory powerful enough that she wants to shoot up right then, right in front of him. "Fact, if you start payin' me, I'll do – or say – anythin' you like."

Raphael just gapes at her, his brow ridges working, his eyes flickering back and forth between insult and rage as he blinks, confused. She takes another draw, the smoke squeezing painfully around the lump in her throat. It's so important she stays cool, that she doesn't crack. That he doesn't know just how much that hurt.

"_You were _just_ givin' _me_ shit_!" he exclaims, rising up onto his knees, his hands in clenched fists before him, as though imploring her to make him understand.

She ashes the cigarette onto the floorboards, pulls her knees up to her chest. "About technique." Her voice sounds weird, kinda strained. Her chest is so tight she thinks her bones could splinter. "Shit you can change. You wanna tell me I suck your dick wrong be my fuckin' guest. But I'm not gonna mewl like a busted baby doll just to match up to some – skewed fuckin' idea of how I'm s'posed to sound when you fuck me."

He continues to stare at her and she can't stand it anymore. She looks away, across the room to the window, the night opening fathomless blue beyond. When she speaks her voice is small and thin, on the brink of cracking: "Isn't it enough that I'm bein' real?"

_Fuck._ She presses her eyes shut, clenches her teeth. She meant to say _it should be enough that I'm bein' real. _If she had to say anything at all, and she wishes so bad now she hadn't. Her gaze falls on Hello Kitty's face, peeking out tauntingly from beneath a rumpled fold of fabric and the weight of Raphael's stare makes her tracks itch.

Suddenly he grasps hold of her ankle and tugs her forward. Unprepared, she pitches back and slides over the mattress towards him, and she's ready to fight, already yanking uselessly at his grip, arms flailing.

He takes hold of her wrist with one hand and her heart jolts at how effortlessly he stills her, how she can tell if she wrenches too hard she'll break her own fucking arm if he doesn't want to let go. He takes the cigarette from between her fingers and grinds it out into the floor, and then he's kissing her, his fervour making her rush hot and prickling and though for a moment her palm presses up against his plastron as though to push him away, she doesn't want to, not really. Her heart is pounding so hard her ribcage shudders. She's never known what it feels like, to wonder if she's enough the way she is; she's never given a fuck. And now that she does, the force with which she craves his reassurance overwhelms the usual impulse to resist. He's pushing her into the mattress and his bulk is crushing and she's pulling him down harder onto her and the storm that has erupted inside her seems to flow between them, through her mouth and into his until their skin thrums with the charge they feed each other.

He kisses his way hotly down her bony body and, as she realises his intentions, her breath catches hard and her pulse hammers. They haven't done this yet. He hasn't asked and neither has she. Truthfully, she hasn't given it much though. Like everything else, she doesn't really feel it when she's with a client, except for the distant awareness that it's happening and she has to follow a pattern of simulated reactions so that they will stop. If she feels anything it's when they're too rough or too clumsy, and Raphael's been so awkward with his hands she's figured head might just be a bad idea.

But he wants to now, for whatever reasons might be, and she wants to let him, because she needs his desire to comfort her, so she can forget she ever felt this way. She lets her legs part for him and he pushes her knees further out. Her eyes squeeze shut as he grasps one thigh, his thumb pressing into the tender inner flesh. He pauses and she holds her breath; when he exhales onto her she is surprised by the lick of anticipation that runs up her spine, making her arch.

She cannot help the gaspy rush of breath when his tongue first touches her. He does it so softly, so gently, her clit immediately hardens and tingles for more. As he laps at her again, the stroking warm wet of his tongue sending intoxicating ripples of sensation coasting up through her body, she realises her bluntness is driving his concentrated gentleness, that he's being careful bordering on tentative. For a moment guilt spikes her gut but then she's arching back against the lumpy mattress, her cheek turning to press against sheets that smell of nicotine and jasmine oil, her hands clutching into threadbare fabric as his steady, deliberate lapping causes a sudden intense rush of pleasure that hovers tantalisingly at the brink of euphoria and all she can think of is how fucking good it feels. He's not trying anything fancy, no technique but soft, even strokes, but that's just what has her body taut and poised for release, one heel propped on his shoulder with her leg splayed to the side, the toes of the other curling into the mattress, the regular hot gust of his breath against her livening the nerves moistened by his mouth as he continues to lick her.

He pauses to breathe in so that she aches for more, exhales hard and laps at her softly again and all of a sudden she's ripped over the edge into an ecstasy that grips her so hard she's mindless, trembling, gasping, clutching at his head, her hips rising. It seems endless but ebbs too soon, the rhythmic pulse that runs through her a lingering memory that leaves her biting her lip, her eyes still squeezed shut. Raphael stops; she hears the rustle of sheets, feels the dip of the mattress as he shifts. She thinks he's sitting up, looking at her. She can't open her eyes. Not yet.

Then she sits straight up and reaches for him, their mouths hotly mashing as she grasps blindly at his shoulders. His powerful arms wrap round her, crushing her close against his armoured chest and they kiss deeply and deliriously as she slumps onto his lap and he cradles her.

A little while later, as he is strapping on his pads and belt, readying to head back to his underground home before the dawn can break over the city, she lifts a cigarette to her lips and admires the supple shift of his musculature, the little furrow that ever creases his brow and wishes she could ask him to stay.

She sits against the wall with one knee crooked, and figures after all that she's not giving anything more away if she tells him what she thinks.

"That was fuckin' awesome," she says, and though he doesn't look up from lacing his knee pad, she can see one side of his mouth sidle up in a self-satisfied smile.

"Well, that I can do anytime," he mutters as though he's just realised how simple it could be after all, and his expression lightens a touch and then he does look over at her and they smile at each other in the soft yellow haze of the lamp.

"I'm sorry," she says abruptly. "For bein' a cunt. The way I said – " she breaks off, fiddles with a strand of hair. She's not used to apologising either.

He shrugs it off, looking back down as he finishes tightening the laces on the other knee pad, his mouth twitching uncomfortably. "Forget it." He lifts his head to look at her again, his throat bobbing as he swallows, his brow heavy over dark eyes. "It – I – " His jaw shifts as he grits his teeth, gives up on whatever he was trying to say. "I'm sorry too." He shifts over the mattress to kiss her, tilting her chin upwards with curled fingertips, the thumb of his other hand grazing her nipple.

She cocks a brow tartly at him when he draws back. "You really had to cop a feel?"

He smirks. "Hey, need somethin' to hold me over." His expression grows somber. "Think I'll have to stay close to home for a coupla nights."

Her heart spikes, then sinks but she keeps her face still, her chin still clasped in his hand, gazing steadily into his marbled green eyes. "Sure thing."

"Y'oughta get a phone," he says seriously, not for the first time, and she turns her head away, forcing him to release her.

"Maybe," she says dismissively, cos she doesn't want to start a fight now and he lets it go, possibly for the same reason.

She looks back at him and he opens his mouth as though to say something, then thinks better of it. He pushes her hair back over her ear and strokes her cheek with scarred knuckles and she has to fight the urge to hold onto him. She lifts her cigarette to her lips and takes a long draw instead.

"See ya in a couple days then," she says quietly and he nods, and goes.

The barren little room seems emptier after he leaves and it's only then when she's left alone with the sheets rumpled and smelling of him and the dark walls quietly looming that she thinks of fixing again.


	12. Chapter 10

Raphael skids to a halt on the rooftop and gazes out across the hazy city landscape, an endless map of gold thread and shadow defining the countless structures that unfold all around him, buildings and roads and bridges and tunnels and parks, on and on and on, all the ways that humans gather and nest and stay close to each other. It is all slightly muted behind the visor, colours dulled to sepia, sounds distant and echoing.

Even through the thick padding of the leather gloves he wears, his knuckles are smarting. He can feel the burn linger in the well-exerted muscles of his arms and shoulders and his blood pounds hotly in his veins.

He'd gone hard that night. Some cartel higher-up threw a bash for the other lieutenants. Mighta been a genuine show of camaraderie, or the first step in a takeover bid. It never got the chance to play out.

But it didn't matter, the number of noses that crunched beneath his punches, the jaws that dislocated with a sharp crack, the way that arms and legs had snapped like twigs - none of it could blot out the violent echo of his own furious words, or the way that Splinter had gazed at him, solemn and dark-eyed, before he'd turned heel and run from the lair. Like a fucking coward.

He hadn't stayed long enough even to hear the wail of the police siren. Left the bastards groaning and whimpering in twisted, bloodied heaps on the fancy shag pile rug for the cops to take care of. And the leather gloves creak as his fists tighten to realise they'll be sprung first thing in the morning, a little worse for wear perhaps, but no more than that.

And there'll be another bounty out on his head.

He tugs the helmet off, tips his head back to the yawning night sky, feels the city pulse and hum around him. It's not the futility of his efforts that bug him. He's not afraid of being hunted either. If he's being honest, right then he's excited by it all, feels the muscles of his shoulders bunch, his fists clench harder, his blood stream spiking with a hot flood of need and desire. He _wants_ it.

Because what's eating him up, devouring him from the inside out, is the look on his father's still, composed face, the drooping ears and the eyes that are deep with disappointment and pain.

What he's hearing beneath the roar of blood is his own voice, shouting and cruel: _When did you decide to just give up on us? Do you even fuckin' care? Or are we not worth the effort now that the golden boy is gone?_

Raphael grimaces, grinds his booted heel into the rooftop, a frustrated growl rumbling in his throat. Spots dance in front of his eyes and he knuckles at them, whirls around, but the feeling follows, clawed grip on his heart, yanking doggedly as he spins, unshakeable.

The drug bust hadn't worked. Hadn't done more than briefly quell the roaring tide that threatened to consume him. That rose again now, relentless and bitter, thundering up through his gut to crush his heart beneath the deluge.

It would be easy enough to find more violence out there tonight. Too easy.

But in a moment of clarity that freezes the breath in his lungs, he realises it would never be enough.

He goes in search once more.

He finds her ambling through backstreets on the way back to her spot, hands thrust into the pockets of the denim mini skirt she's wearing, cigarette drooping from her lips. He mounts the sidewalk to stop her, the rumble of the engine making the ground below their feet tremble as she stares at him, one eyebrow cocked. She takes the helmet he silently hands her, then slings a pale, skinny leg over the bike behind him.

And then they are tearing through the city, the roar of the bike thundering over the clamour of his own brutal recollection, her arms tight around his waist, the streets whipping past in streaks of red and gold.

He takes them to the docks, to an old terminal float bridge, its slatted wood tracks littered with rusting carriages, stretching out to the river that shifts and glimmers. They are dimly illuminated in light reflected off the water, and her pale skin is silvery, the dark hollows of her eyes glittering as she tugs her helmet off. Their boots echo on the rotting old wood as they dismount the bike, and she glances at him curiously when he lets his helmet drop with a clatter, rips off the steel gauntlets and shoulder pads then unfastens the straps that hold the artificial shell in place over his own, shrugging it quickly off.

"You wanna talk about it?" she asks him quietly and lifts a cigarette to her lips, the flame as she lights it throwing a brilliant glare across her pointed little face for an instant. He can hear the water lapping at the dock and the empty carriages around them loom.

"No," he replies tersely as he unzips the suit. What he wants is to fuck. Get her on the bike, push her skirt up above her hips, then wrap her legs around his waist so that her ankles press into his carapace. Her bony fingertips digging into his biceps, the soft flesh of her neck between his teeth, her ass palmed in his hands, angling her so he can get in deep and hard.

His blood is boiling from the hot tumult of anticipation as he steps out of the suit and turns towards her where she smokes, one arm slung across her waist, backing up to the bike. She slides up onto the seat and for an excited moment he thinks she has guessed his desire and moves towards her, his heart pounding. But then the burning tip of her cigarette shifts through the shadows, she takes a draw and exhales, stares right at him, her eyes fathomless in the night.

"I don't feel like sex right now."

He halts. For a moment all he can do is blink stupidly, his arms rippling with tension, the coiled fury and self-loathing in his chest seeming to press urgently at his plastron, desperate for release. She says nothing else, just perches on the bike, an arm draped across her knees and regards him coolly, her hair dark shadows, her eyes glittering with points of light captured off the river that laps and flows beneath them. Across the water, the city shimmers and hums against the inky sky.

He releases a great gust of air and turns away, looking out across the docks where darkened warehouses hulk in long rows.

"S'ok," he mutters. "Wasn't expectin' it."

It's an obvious lie, but now guilt slithers up through his gut as well and his mind hammers with a litany of recrimination and disgust, so furious and fast that his throat chokes with it and his eyes burn. Turning on his father like that, walking out, being too much of a fucking coward to go back, trying to make himself feel better by beating the shit outta some thugs and when that didn't work - acting like she was just gonna open her legs and take it. What the fuck was _wrong_ with him?

Again she speaks, her voice quiet and hoarse: "You wanna talk about it?"

"No!" he snaps this time, turning savagely towards her.

She doesn't flinch, just lifts her cigarette to her lips and takes a long draw.

"Okay," she says around a stream of smoke.

He grits his teeth and looks out over the water, his body gripped by a tremor that demands release, a restless, savage desire he is desperate to heed. He needs to forget, goddamnit. He needs to be nothing but sinew and bone, roaring blood and the wet heat of sweat. He needs to be so occupied by the urgent exertion of his body that he cannot think.

Amber ambles along a track, balancing unsteadily on one rail in her scuffed old pink Dr Martens, follows it to where it abruptly stops over the water. She stands there, a skinny silhouette against the glow of the distant city, a breeze whipping her hair so it flaps darkly around her head. She turns and looks towards him, though he cannot see her face now.

"Take me home then."

His pulse thunders in his ears as a wave of frustration engulfs him and he has to clench his jaw before he lashes out at her too. Instead he turns silently to the discarded heap of the suit and begins to yank it all back fucking on again.

Amber drops the butt of her cigarette to the tracks and grinds it hard beneath her heel.

"I've had one of those nights too," she says in a quiet, tired sort of way and there's something about her voice that arrests him for a moment as he steps into the suit.

"You okay?" he queries her gruffly, tugging the thick leather up around his waist and threading his arms through the sleeves.

She saunters back to the bike, shrugging her backpack off and lifting up the seat to reveal the storage compartment within. "Yeah."

As he straps on the shin guards and gauntlets again, he wonders if he should invite her to talk to him. It seems like something he should do. Girls like talking, right? And she'd asked him…

But Amber has never been what he was led to expect women should be. And he's never been good at talking anyway.

Besides, he's really not in the mood to talk.

"_This_ is the book you borrowed?"

He glances over at her again, sees her standing there by his bike, her backpack slumped in the storage compartment, frowning at the slim volume in her hands. It's been stowed away in his bike for weeks. He keeps forgetting to return it.

"Huh? Oh – yeah." Heat rushes his cheeks and he stoops to retrieve his shoulder pads.

"Did you like it?" Her voice is carefully neutral but still he hesitates.

"Uh – " He finishes fixing the pads in place, tilts his chin back to scratch his neck.

"Did you finish it?" This time he can hear a hint of wry amusement and he chuffs a little.

"Ah – no."

She jams her backpack down into the compartment, closes it and slides up sideways onto the seat, shaking her head a little as she flicks through the book's worn, old pages. "Of all the fuckin' books you coulda borrowed, why would you pick _A Little Princess_?"

He shrugs, cracks his knuckles together and casts an edgy glance at the thrumming city. He wants to get moving, drop her off so he can hit the streets again – go for a ride, look for another fight – _something_, anything that'll drag him outta his head. "Seen you read it a buncha times, so I figured it must've been good."

Truth is, he thought he might understand her a little better after reading one of her favourite books. He can't even remember now how he had come to notice it – it'd just been around so long, with its peeling spine and missing front cover, that he'd gotten used to seeing it. When he'd asked to borrow a book and she'd shrugged and told him to go for it, it had seemed the natural choice.

But he was only able to struggle through the first few chapters before tossing it aside, frustrated. And more confused than ever.

"Raphael, if you just asked me I coulda suggested a book you'd actually enjoy," she says dryly, pushing long locks of hair back over her shoulder, and his veins abruptly crackle with irritation cos he can't go spilling his guts about it now. "I mean, fuck, this is for little girls."

"Then why the hell do you like it so much?" he barks at her. "I mean – that was just some – sentimental, wishy-washy, fuckin' – cornball garbage! What was the point? Some little rich kid goes away to school and is fuckin' perfect at everythin' and everyone loves her! Worships her! And she never does anythin' wrong, gets everythin' she wants!" He's stomping up and down, the track rattling beneath his boots, gesturing expansively with his hands. "And that hoity-toity way it's written! What a fuckin' snooze!"

"Gee, tell me how you really feel," Amber grins, her freckled skin pale in the glow the city throws across the water, her eyes deep shadows.

He kicks at a spray of gravel, huffs. "I mean, okay, I could get it if – I dunno, _April_ liked it or somethin' – but you? It's just - girly trash."

"I _am_ a girl." Her voice is dark. She props her heels on the exhaust pipe, folds her arms across her knees and looks at him. He looks at her sitting on his bike, dappled in shadows, her hair cascading over her shoulders, her lips in a stiff line and his heart lurches a little, his tail twitches. Jesus, he knows _that_.

"I ain't bein' sexist – " he insists before she can even start, and even in the dim light he can see the way one eyebrow darts straight up. " – Just – don't really seem your style, that kinda shit."

She regards him for a long moment with her head tilted back, the book balanced on her lap. Her hands are pushing into the leather seat so that her chest is thrust forward and her tiny breasts press against the fabric of her Sailor Moon shirt. Her denim skirt is hitched high on her thighs. She's pert and sultry and he's ashamed how bad he wishes she'd been in the mood to fuck.

He scoops the helmet up from the track, clenches then releases his other fist, gives the city a stormy look.

"C'mon, let's get you back."

When she gets off the bike, in a dark alley a couple of blocks from her place, she steps around to face him and places a hand on his gloved one.

"Come inside for a while," she says, and as he looks at her through the visor of his helmet, her pale face and bloodshot eyes, he realises they haven't even kissed yet.

And she seems to need him. It's not something he's used to feeling. Not from her – not from anyone. And it occurs to him at last what an asshole he'd be to hunt her down only to ride off again when she didn't put out. When she's had a shitty night too.

He comes in through the window, just in case, and she enters the room a moment later, locks the door with the latch bolt he had installed for her, then kicks off her battered old boots before dumping her backpack by the mattress and collapsing onto it in a graceless heap.

He removes the helmet, but that's all, sits on the window sill and glances back over his shoulder through the decrepit neighbourhood she calls home, crooked dark streets lined in ramshackle tenements, winding a battered path back to where the city hums.

There's the spark of the lighter and the scent of nicotine wafts on the air. He turns back to see she's got the worn old book in her hands and is turning over the pages.

"I stole this from my school library in fifth grade," she says, turns to the back page where a faded blue stamp had been pressed. "Had it all this time. Thought I'd lost it when I couldn't find it the other week, couldn't figure how. I was… kinda upset about it. How far didja get into it?"

The relentless beat of his heart seems abruptly to stop as the implication sinks in: that these last few weeks he's been carrying around something that's tied to the very place she came from and didn't know it, didn't even notice. He gets that she doesn't want to talk about her past so much – respects it. Casey's always been the same and whatever he knows had been revealed over years of hanging out, shooting shit after fighting side-by-side. Hell, he's not real big on talking about himself either.

But he wishes he had known.

"Um – the birthday party," he mumbles, turns the helmet over in his hands, eyes tracing the various dings and scratches that track its surface.

"Where her dad dies?"

"Huh?" He looks over at her again and she smiles crookedly at him, lifts the cigarette to her lips.

"Spoiler alert."

"Right." His own mouth curves. He remembers her asking Mikey what the hell that meant when she'd been forced to stay with them, what seems now a lifetime ago.

"Yeah, her dad dies and she's left in poverty and the headmistress forces her to work as a maid and starves her and she lives in a rotten little attic with nothin'. Except her fuckin' doll."

Raphael blinks at her several times, chuffs. "So shit gets real."

She laughs like she can't help it, a throaty little sound that makes him want to go sit beside her. "Yeah, shit gets real. Then it gets unreal." She looks at the battered book in her hand, shrugs. "It's a stupid fuckin' book, I guess. But there's this bit – I dunno. This rich guy who lives next door notices the shitty conditions she's living in and he sneaks in her window and decorates her attic with all this fancy shit and leaves food behind and when she wakes up she thinks it happened by magic. It – " she hesitates, and even by the dim glow of her lamp he sees how deeply her cheeks colour. Then she lifts her head to gaze at him, her eyes blazing. " – It's some girly trash I like."

He scuffs a heavy boot against the dusty floorboards, rubs his eyes with the butt of his palm. "I wasn't tryin' to rag on ya. Just seemed – too sappy for you."

"Do you think I wasn't a little girl once?"

It's the strange note in her voice that stills him. She's looking back down at the book again, a skinny junkie sitting cross-legged on a lumpy old mattress on the floor, ashing her cigarette into an empty instant noodle bowl. She's been off all night, quiet and distant, and he remembers her hand on his when she asked him to come in.

He pushes off the window sill and strides across the room to drop down beside her, the leather of the suit creaking, the stiff metal of the armour making him feel too big, too awkward in such an intimate space.

"You wanna talk?"

She turns her head and he can see the play of shadow and light in her eyes. "I'm okay. Are you okay?"

"I – " abruptly there's a lump in his throat and he swallows hard. He glances back towards the window, remembers again the profound sorrow in his father's eyes, and his heart tears. He should be used to fucking up by now. " – I don't wanna talk." He is ashamed of the harsh sadness in his voice.

She leans over and kisses him softly on the cheek and a spark runs through him. He looks at her again and in her eyes he sees the reflection of his own heartache. The corner of her mouth twitches in a sympathetic little smile and she places one tiny hand on his. Suddenly he is exhausted, his shoulders slumping wearily, an ache running right down to his bones and his eyes feel raw and dry.

He begins once again to tug at the armour, pulling it off piece by piece and letting it clatter to the side on the pocked old floorboards. Beside him, Amber leafs quietly through this book she has carried through all the years since she ran away from home, curling her legs up under her, her hair falling around her face like a curtain through which the lamplight shimmers.

He pulls his legs free of the leather body suit and tosses it aside, then turns to lie down on his plastron, pulling the pillow under his cheek, his limbs painfully settling. Amber shifts to put her back up against the wall, and he peers up to see she is reading the book again, a little knot between her brows, her eyes flickering as she silently absorbs a story she must know almost by heart.

"Read some t'me," he surprises himself by mumbling. He doesn't want to leave her, but he doesn't want to think either, and he's so tired and sore; he can't think of a damn else thing to do until he relaxes enough to fall asleep.

Amber looks down at him silently for a long moment.

"From the birthday party?" she finally asks.

He shrugs, pressing his eyes shut as he inhales the slightly musty odour from the pillow he grips against his face. "Sure." It's her voice he wants to hear, something to focus on through the punishing churn of his mind.

He hears the rustle as she turns the pages, and the mattress bounces as she wiggles down to lie beside him and he lifts a heavy arm to sling over her waist. She sniffs, clears her throat and starts to read.

Her southern Jersey accent makes the old-fashioned prose more familiar somehow, not so impenetrable as he remembers it being, and he is lulled by the soft raspiness of her voice. The pace of his heart calms, its thud no longer quite so painful, and the coiled tension continues to steadily ebb from his limbs. As Amber reads to him about the fantasy world a small child creates after losing her father, he lifts his head and rests it on her chest, feeling the soft vibrations of her words against his cheek, the warmth of her close to him, and it is good to be there with her. For once, to not be alone.


	13. Chapter 11

Amber leans up against her street post, lifts her cigarette to her lips and surveys the thronging length of her beat. It's early enough yet that the crowds are brisk and the streets still roar with a constant flow of traffic.

The new bite of autumn makes her glad for the fuzzy hoodie she wears, the bear-eared hood thrown back so that her hair falls straight and loose, gleaming beneath the neon like burnished copper. Her bare legs prickle and she shifts her weight, crosses her ankles, exhales a stream of smoke into the night air, ruddy with the glow of street light.

A tipsy couple tramp by and she sees the woman glance at her. Then there's the abrupt halt of her giggles, the sideways glare as she tightens her grip on her boyfriend's arm and Amber drops a belligerent wink. They pass on by and she rolls her eyes. It happens a half dozen times a night. Do they think she's gonna jump on their useless men right there and then in the fuckin' street?

The unmistakeable riff of _Under Pressure _thrums from Lenny's Vintage Vinyl and a small ripple goes around the clutch of loiterers and automatically her head begins bopping in time to the beat and the old urge to dance begins to tingle inside her.

Just as she starts to sway, the roar of a bike engine rises above the honks and shouting and she can't suppress the grin: she knows that engine, knows it so well even the vibration it sends down her spine seems to rattle each vertebrae in a particular order. She looks down the street and sees the Nightwatcher pull into the curb. Then her pale red brows lift as Sapphire delicately dismounts from behind him, one manicured hand lingering flirtatiously on his chest as she smiles and preens, shifting from one towering stiletto heel to the other, her hips swaying.

They are too far down the block for her to hear what's being said, and the Nightwatcher's face is nothing more than the blank sheen of metal. She takes a draw from her cigarette and looks out across the street where jaywalkers dart through traffic and the cars race to beat the lights. She sees one slow down as it approaches, the shadowed flash of jeering faces within and automatically starts stepping backwards, towards the shelter of the shopfront awning, and hopes their aim is weak. A moment later and one of the passengers is pointing in the Nightwatcher's direction and the car speeds up again, too fast. If Raphael gave as much of a fuck about traffic violations as he did about eggs and bottles of piss chucked at hookers, those assholes would be in deep shit right now.

She hears the gunning of the bike's engine again, deliberately doesn't look in its direction. A moment later, he roars past, and she sees the reflection of neon flash across the visor as he glances quickly at her, and smiles a little.

When Sapphire sashays past, a towering vision of street trash glamour, she calls out to Amber: "he's such a good man, that Nightwatcher!"

And Amber draws back hard on her cigarette so she won't say "he's _my_ man" back. Even though she really fuckin' wants to.

And she remembers how it felt back when he used to be able to pick her up on the bike right there on her beat and how all the girls thought they were doing it before they even were, that he'd chosen her. Out of everyone, the Nightwatcher had chosen her and suddenly she is very warm beneath the soft fleece of the hoodie even as her heart knocks painfully against her ribcage because by now they all figured he'd gotten bored of her and she can't say otherwise.

Not like she gives that much of a fuck what other people think. Not normally.

But she never had anything worth bragging about before.

She waits for him on the rooftop that overlooks the river, sitting with legs slung over the side. The wind whips faster up here, lashes through her hair and pulls it in a wild tangle around her head and she pulls her knees up to her chest and zips her hoodie up over them.

"You'll blow away if the wind gets bad enough."

She jumps; he's right behind her. Then she scowls and swivels around, swatting out at him and he laughs in his rough way and dodges. She turns onto her knees on the ledge and at that instant the wind gusts past in a violent torrent and she loses her balance, tipping backwards, the emptiness behind her cold against her back, the sky black above, and then his powerful hand has gripped her wrist and yanked her forward against him where she trembles against his plastron, her head spinning.

"Like that," he chuffs, but she can hear the thread of tension in his voice and his grip on her wrist hasn't loosened. Abruptly she snorts, tosses her hair and looks him right in the eye like her heart isn't careening wildly in her chest.

"Just keepin' you on your toes," she says dryly and he narrows his eyes back at her, yanks her off the ledge and onto her feet, pushing her towards the mouldy old couch they've sat beside each other on since before they ever guessed they would come to this.

"What?" she teases, as she flops down onto the rain-stained cushions. "You were doing your best to keep me on mine earlier."

"What are you talkin' about?" he grumbles, slumping down next to her, slinging an arm around her shoulders, and the weight of it is disturbingly soothing. She's not sure she'll ever really get used to it, this addictive intimacy, the way being near him makes it impossible not to touch him, the way her skin tingles with the desire to feel him touch her, like there's a magnetic charge between them. She's never wanted this kind of closeness before. It makes her uneasy but she can't resist it. And that makes it worse.

She fumbles for a cigarette, tosses her head again as she lifts it to her lips. "You tryin' to pretend that wasn't you droppin' that hot bitch with the big tits off earlier?"

She's teasing him, but he bridles all the same, the couch creaking beneath him as he turns towards her, a defensive glare weighing his features down.

"What? That wasn't – I mean, yeah, but – I dunno what you're thinkin', but – "

She doesn't know why she pushes it further, she doesn't want to fight tonight. But all the same she puffs out a lungful of smoke and cocks a brow at him. "I'm thinkin' she looked pretty fuckin' cosy on the back of your bike."

"Hey!" he barks, eyes glittering fiercely, his brow heavily furrowed as he shifts away from her, propping a leg up on the couch so he can face her fully, his arm now slung over the back of it rather than around her. "You really gotta question me about that kinda shit, then you don't fuckin' know me at all. And I don't gotta stand for being insulted like that, Alex, so fuck you."

She takes another drawl on her cigarette, coolly exhales. "I'm just windin' you up," she says flatly, leaning forward to rest a forearm across her knees, nothing in her indifferent demeanour to betray how her skin is suddenly frigid from the absence of him, how her body craves his touch so badly she aches. "Sorry." She doesn't sound sorry at all of course, and his jaw stiffens as he glares at her, shakes his head slowly.

"Ha fuckin' ha," he mutters, and abruptly swivels forward, slamming his foot down on the roof, his arms violently folded across his plastron. For several moments they sit in silence, him glaring out over the river and her smoking and contemplating the faintly luminous clouds overhead. It occurs to her that once upon a time, before that first fuck, one of them would've stormed off by now. She wonders what she would've done if he had gotten up to leave, and feels her gut twist – she would've let him go. Of course she would've, even though she would've shrivelled up inside. Even the thought of him stalking off now causes a sudden pang, a surprisingly violent sensation. If she touched him now, would he shrug her off? She glances at him and sees how rigid he is, staring furiously out to where the distant lights of the passing boats glitter on the dark water, and decides not to risk it.

Her skin prickles from the nearness of his and, however pissed he seems, he just keeps on sitting there and she wonders if he feels this same pull, like they're bound within some gravitational force.

"So, what were you doin' with her then?" she asks him, her own gaze now fixed on the river. She's trying to figure out what she needs to do to get him touching her again. He grunts, shifts testily, and she can just imagine the roll of his eyes.

"If you gotta know, some trick wouldn't drive her back and she was stuck walkin'. I passed her by and offered her a lift. Y'know she wears those stupid goddamn shoes all the damn time," he snapped at her. "That's it."

She doesn't answer, but something sweet brims in her chest and the distant shifting lights on the dark expanse of the water glimmer and blur. She raises her cigarette to her lips and takes a long draw and the wind whips away the cloud of smoke she exhales, drags her hair across her eyes.

Beside her, Raphael shifts irritably. "That okay with you?" he demands.

She tosses the butt to the rooftop, then turns and presses her lips to his mouth.

He stiffens up, recoils a little and she can feel the tension in his bicep where their arms press. His mouth is unyielding beneath hers because he's even more stubborn than she is, so she breaks the kiss and tilts her head back a little to look at him. He stares at her warily, one brow ridge cocked.

"Well aren't you just the sweetest fuckin' thing?" she says softly and leans in to kiss him again.

It's a long, long moment before he responds but then there is the slightest softening of his mouth against hers. She lets the kiss linger a moment longer and then sits back again. He doesn't look as pissed now, but he's trying to and affection for all his damned obstinance wells inside her like a spring of golden warmth so that she doesn't notice the wind anymore.

She kisses him again because she can't seem to help it and this time he kisses her back. The joy of it rushes her hotly and it's as though she melts, her joints liquefying, her limbs suddenly limp. She kisses him again and again until she feels slightly giddy and she can't stop smiling against his mouth, the chapped skin of her lips pulling painfully tight. She's on his lap now, sideways with her booted feet resting on the couch cushions and he's holding her, his plastron rigid against her breasts, his huge hands strong on her back and though the wind whips chilled around them, the heat between them builds.

"What's all this about?" he chuffs and she kisses him again. He's confused, but pleased as well, enjoying the attention as she strokes his cheeks with both hands and gazes at him, loving the way his broad features crumple as he struggles to remain stoic.

"You did a nice thing," she says, and her voice is throaty. He's suddenly bashful, glancing away, the corner of his mouth twitching in an awkward grin.

"'S nothin'," he mumbles and she kisses him because she doesn't know how to tell him it wasn't nothing, that it was enormous, that he gave a black trans woman street hooker a ride on his motorbike to save her feet and her time, that he noticed at all, that someone notices, that someone in all the world gives a fuck about their wretched lives for no reason at all, not to change them or save them, or profit off of them or solve their problems, who saw the simplest and most immediate way to make the night a little easier for one of them and did it without thinking. For no reason other than because he thought her fucking feet would get sore.

And she doesn't know what else to do with this feeling that brims in her 'til she feels like her chest is gonna burst with it, so she just leans in to kiss him again and he tilts his head to meet her, the last of his anger fading beneath the force of her adoration. His powerful arm cradles her and she hooks her fingertips over the rim of his plastron and her toes in the scuffed old boots curl when he nuzzles and gently bites her neck. Her feet flex, her heels drag back against the cushions when he bites a little harder, hot flushes of aroused nerves racing across her skin and she runs a hand up and over his shoulder, down the rigid peaks of his biceps, squeezing and relishing the unyielding muscle. Sapphire can flutter her mink lashes at him until she whips up a gale, but it's her he's with.

"You always do shit like that?" she murmurs as his teeth graze her clavicle. He tugs her a little closer and she feels the hard peak of her nipple tingle against his plastron.

He grunts non-committal against her flesh, but she doesn't need an answer. She knows. And she lifts his head to hers and kisses him again.

"So that's how to make you stop ridin' my tail," he grins when they pause for air a little while later. "Who knew you'd be such a fuckin' sap."

She sneers and tosses her head, but her fingertips play along the solid length of his neck and she can't look away from the glow deep set in his eyes, warm and just a little cocky. She remembers the way Sapphire's fingertips trailed his shoulder and basks in the knowledge Sapphire has never looked into his eyes, has never really seen him. Never will. Not like she has.

"The girls ever hit on you?" she asks him curiously. He's helped more than one of them out of a jam – she's heard the stories often enough on street corners and clustered gatherings in all-night diners, stories that would've ended in battered and violated bodies, stolen income and dignity crushed had he not been there. He can't be there every time – not even for her – but he makes a difference. The sight of his bike tooling down the street is often met with a string of whoops and applause from working girls on their beats. She never joins in, just smokes and watches with a wry smile as he pops a wheelie, showing off shamelessly for the cheers of a motley line of hookers who know they can worry a little less about gangs and mugs and crooked cops now that he's out on the town. She's stood by and listened while Georgie, Sapphire and Lucinda have detailed, with explicit mirth, the various illicit and imaginative ways they'd put his solid, muscular form to damn good use, and never joined in. But it occurs to her now there's a hundred small moments she has never been there to witness, when they are alone with him and he's done something to make them feel like their lives are worth a damn.

And the shit-eating smirk that suddenly sidles up one side of his mouth prompts her gut to upend even as a wry smile tugs at her own lips. Cos, after all, why would he be with her if he had more options?

"I get an offer or two," he admits, and he's obviously so goddamn pleased about it she can't bring herself to get too pissed. He's eighteen after all, and it's not as though he ever woulda thought he'd get girls hitting on him. He can't even go home and brag about it to his brothers and she just bets that kills him.

"Do you just?" she tilts her head backwards against his arm, bops the tip of his snout with a bony fingertip and he snorts and jerks his head away. "You tell 'em you're spoken for, right?"

His expression falls and she can see it's never occurred to him. And, from the wary glint that abruptly flares in his eye, he's realising that might've been a big mistake.

"Never really comes up," he says carefully. "Not like I'm ever gonna take 'em up on it, after all."

She arches an eyebrow at him. "Some bitch is hittin' you up and mentionin' you already got a girl doesn't come up?"

The swaggering glow that lit his face up is starting to fade and his brows knot in a scowl that doesn't conceal the confusion and disappointment that embers deep set in his eyes and she feels rotten for it but all she can think is that he doesn't wanna brag about her the way she wishes she could about him, and why would he, after all. She doesn't want it to hurt as much as it does, the heavy thud of her heart like a weight that pummels her sternum.

"Well, ain't none of their business," he starts defensively. "Don't want it goin' around – stirrin' up questions from the wrong people." He fixes her with an obstinate glare and leaves it at that. They never talk about what happened, even though it was what brought them together to begin with.

She gets it, but she needs a cigarette or she might actually ask him if he'd never take them up on it cos he's happy with her, or because he can't. And there's no way – no way she can do that.

So she relents. "Okay," she shrugs and looks away, to the far side of the river where the night glitters, fumbling in the pocket of her hoodie then lifting the smoke to her lips.

He is silent for a long moment and she can tell he doesn't really understand what's going on and again she feels a stab of remorse as she smokes and taps her boots against the lumpy cushion, sitting languid in his lap, the muscle of his thighs hard against her bony ass. But the truth is she doesn't really get it either – she's never felt this confusing array of emotions before, doesn't like the way they make her feel, slightly wild and out of control, making her want to cling to him like if he slips away she'll just lose it altogether and it feels like any moment he could slip away…

And she knows she'd rather let go first, before he can. Because it already hurts more than she can stand, just to feel this way.

She takes another draw on her cigarette, watches the wind chase the smoke away, her fingers bitten numb by the cold air. She can feel him watching her, the frustration and confusion that tenses his body. Then she starts as rough knuckles push her hair back over her ear, making her skin tingle. The calloused pads of his fingertips are tracing her jaw then and she turns her head to look at him again.

"Anyway, you're my girl," he says quietly. "Y'don't need to get jealous." And a little grin quirks his mouth even as his eyes gravely promise her. She feels a flush steal over her cheeks and is glad they are cast only in shades of blue and silver on the rooftop barely lit by the surrounding glow of the city.

"You wish," she sniffs but he silences her with a kiss and it feels so good, so quickly soothes her rattled heart, that she lets go of what could be, of what she's afraid might be, and just enjoys it. She shivers, turns in towards him and his big arms wrap tight around her. Her head swims and she feels suffused with warmth. It's wonderful and terrifying and she figures it doesn't matter so much if no one else in all the world knows what they are to each other, because they know. And whatever else might be or could be, right then they only have eyes for each other. It's enough.


	14. Chapter 12

She looks over to him where he fills the window frame, and even in the dim glow of the lamp she's reading by, he can see her black eye.

"What the hell?" he drops to his feet on the dusty floorboards, the sudden surge of protective anger hot as fire behind his eyes.

"It wasn't a mug," she says in a quick, exasperated way, tossing her book down by the mattress. "It was another girl."

Raphael is somewhat appeased by this, exhaling heavily through his nostrils, his clenched fists slowly loosening as he steps across the dark room to her side.

"What happened?"

Amber's lip twitches at the corner as she tilts her head back to look up at him, her freckles stark against her bloodless skin, her damaged eye swimming in blood. "I gave as good as I got."

But he's not in the mood and drops abruptly to his knees on the mattress, so thin he can feel the hard floor beneath, eyes boring into her, jaw locked. "What. Happened?"

She rolls her eyes, tosses a long lock of pale red hair over a freckled shoulder. "We had a disagreement. We kicked the shit out of each other. It happens."

"Happens too damn much," he mutters, taking her face in his massive palms and tilting her head towards the light to examine the damage. The flesh around the eye is a turgid purple and swollen so that the eye itself is a mere slit, the white completely bloodied and he knows exactly how much it must hurt; he's been there often enough himself. Her lip is fat too, he notices, puffy at one corner, a bright nick of red in the middle of the inflamed tissue and he grits his jaw, shakes his head a little.

She snorts, but submits to the examination. "Like you're one to talk."

His eyes lock with hers again. "I can handle it." His tone is final, but when has she ever cared about that?

"What, a black eye is suddenly more fatal cos I got a vagina or somethin'?"

And he knows, just from the glint in her good eye, she wants to get a rise out of him. And that pisses him off even more.

Scowling, he lets her go and sits back on his haunches. "Don't try and make it about that shit, Alex. You know that ain't what I'm sayin'. I been trained to fight my whole fuckin' life. You can't even walk around the block without gettin' winded."

She scowls right on back at him, even though the effort of it must hurt a whole damn lot. "You haven't even seen the other bitch. I hold my own just fine."

"Some coke-fuelled frenzy don't count."

"Fuck you."

They're glaring at each other through the heavy shadows cast by the beam from the lamp, her lip curled in a furious sneer and his own brow thunderous. She's affecting indifference, back against the graffitied walls, one skinny leg crooked at the knee and her hands clasped around it; he's rigid and looming, every muscle coiled tight. They're about three or four more words away from an outright screaming match and while that's an often enough occurrence between them, the fact she's banged up so bad is tempering his rage.

"Fine," he says through gritted teeth. "I'll see ya tomorrow night."

And he turns to go. It seems the best solution.

"Wait."

Her bony hand is on his wrist, reminding him with a lurch of that bloody morning when she was similarly bruised and battered, that first time she stripped bare before him and drew him into her arms, the first rays of the sun bathing them in gold as she'd kissed away the stain of death the night had ended in. He halts.

"Don't you wanna fuck first?"

Raphael's head whips back to look at her as his blood pressure surges, a violent mix of desire and anger and resentment that boils furiously in his veins. _Of course _he wants to fuck, but he hates that she makes it sound like it's all he came round for, hates that she's trying to game him like that, hates that just the invitation, delivered in her insolent, brazen voice, conjures up vivid memories that make it all too tempting just to go for it, hates his own weakness cos it's not the first time a fight has ended with her pinned beneath him and the ecstasy that follows fogging his mind so that he can't think what it was they were fighting about to begin with, can't remember if he had a good reason to be pissed at her.

She's staring at him with a sort of cool and infuriating smugness, her good eye ice blue, a little smile quirking the corner of her lips, her head tipped languidly back against the wall where red and green lettering halos her. She seems to be taunting him with the proposition, like she's so sure he won't say no and that somehow means she's won the fight, whatever it was they were even arguing about.

But her grip on his wrist is hard. Her tiny hand doesn't reach even halfway around his thick arm, but he can feel the bite of her fingertips in his flesh, feel how tightly she is holding on.

Raphael slowly eases himself back down on the mattress, turning to face her straight on. A breeze sweeps the barren room from the open window, whispering over his skin in the half light, rustling her hair so that he can see her neck is ringed in bruises, and she blinks at him. Even though it must be clear he isn't going anywhere, she doesn't let go.

"No," he replies. "But I'll stay."

Her eyes widen a little in surprise and her eyebrows twitch, a quick contortion of emotion gripping her features. She doesn't seem to know what to say and before he can help himself, he thinks _I won that one then_, and has to suppress a petty smirk. If she saw it, she might tell him to go. And he actually doesn't want to.

Abruptly, Amber lets go of his wrist and retrieves the pack of cigarettes she keeps ever to hand, dropping her gaze with careful nonchalance to tap a smoke out and light it. "Cool," she says, like it's no big deal, like she hadn't just been hanging onto him for dear life a moment ago. Then again, maybe he was imagining it. She sure as fuck doesn't seem to care much now.

He's staring at her with frustrated attention and so sees how she winces as she raises her hands to her mouth, the little grimace that twists her features as she spins the wheel on the lighter.

"Busted shoulder?" he queries her bluntly, and she lifts her eyes to his, unable to conceal altogether the flicker of astonishment in them as she inhales, her cigarette burning vivid orange at the tip. "Yeah, y'know what else a lifetime of martial arts training teaches ya? How to spot a weakness." He can't help rubbing it in a little and she glares at him and exhales in twin streams of noxious grey through her nostrils.

The truth is, he's dying to get his hands on her and check out every bruise and bump for himself and she _should fucking well let him_ but he knows it ain't gonna happen. Not without a fight. And he figures they've got enough time for that later.

So instead he just crooks a massive finger at her. "C'mere. Lemme rub it out." He uncrosses his legs and bends them at the knee, feet flat on that dumpy little mattress, making space for her.

For a moment, Amber just stares at him with an indiscernible expression, her lips pressed hard together, her good eye wide, cigarette smouldering away between her fingers, and he just feels the first twinge of regret for making the stupid offer when she silently starts scootching around toward him, passing her cigarette to her other hand so she can support her weight on the uninjured arm.

She wiggles between his legs and his nostrils flare as the heavy scent of the cheap shampoo she uses hits him. She washes her hair daily in the shower of the scummy little bathroom that adjoins this room, and he can't help the way a tingle rushes up over his skin as he gathers all those soft, silky red locks together in his hands to push over her shoulder.

Amber stiffens when he presses the huge pads of his thumbs into her shoulder, but whether from pain or the unfamiliar touch he isn't sure, because she doesn't make a sound. Carefully, searchingly, he begins to knead her bony shoulder, feeling the inflammation in the wasted muscle, gently – so gently – working the tendons and fibres beneath practiced hands.

For several moments he concentrates only on what he is doing, the silence between them pronounced in the small room, with the humming sounds of the city vivid beyond the window. But as he feels the muscle, stubborn as she is, slowly give beneath his strong fingertips, he finds his gaze trailing down the knobs of her spine to where they disappear beneath the Cookie Monster dress she's wearing. Each vertebrae stands in bold relief through her skin, looking like they're ready to burst through if she leans forward just a little more, and not for the first time he feels his heart clench with worry. Unthinkingly, he shifts one hand to her other shoulder, his massive hands now entirely covering their narrow expanse, the bones feeling terribly slight and fragile beneath a grip he knows could easily crush them if he used even a little of the power he has. It's not just the martial arts, the gruelling conditioning he has endured for as long as he can remember – it's the size of his appendages too, so much bigger than any human hands, obliging exceptional care to be taken, a care that has become second nature to all of them. Even Casey doesn't know how much he holds back. But Amber's too-slender frame frightens him sometimes with how easy it would be for him to hurt her. Yet that same frailty also stirs an overwhelming need in him to protect her, to hold her close to him, and hold her tight.

He doesn't nearly as much as he wants to.

Raphael continues to massage her, eyes roving her slim back, the freckles that cram and cluster even here as though the process of acquiring them was a deliberate and concentrated effort on her part. His fingertips circle downwards, and here he can feel each painfully prominent rib bone, the skin seemingly stretched too thin across them, no muscle or fat at all to provide cushioning and he consciously softens his touch even more, watching the way his hands cover almost the whole of her back as he braces his thumbs either side of her pathetic spine and tenderly kneads a trail up before tracing his four oversized fingertips lightly down.

Amber's head is bent forward, and she is absolutely silent and completely still. He can see from their position that she's crossed her arms over her chest and the breaths she's taking are slow and careful.

And he's not sure how he knows, what exactly it is that gives her away, but he suddenly realises that she's crying.

His first thought, with a sickening lurch in his gut, is that he's hurting her. But immediately he realises that can't be it, cos she'd never just sit there and tolerate it.

His fingertips arrest themselves on her shoulder blades, and his voice is quiet in the decrepit little room: "You okay?"

Slowly, laboriously, her head bobs up and down, but he isn't reassured in the slightest, and he has no fucking idea what to do, the bony protrusion of her shoulder blades hard against his fingers, his heart pounding below his plastron.

Then she speaks, and her voice is tiny and choked with tears: "Don't stop."

As her words sink in, he is overwhelmed by a confusing flood of emotion that clogs his throat, causing his breath to catch and his eyes to tingle and the worst of it is that he doesn't even know why, can't comprehend what is happening between them right then and there. Why is she crying? He's only seen her cry a couple of times and always when some seriously heavy shit was going down – nothing so paltry as a back rub. Maybe she was lying to him and it _was_ a mug who beat her. He already suspects she lies to him about stuff like that all the time. Maybe if she wasn't crying, he'd ask her. But she _is_ crying, and it makes his heart clench painfully, makes the lump in his throat feel like lead.

After a long moment of hesitation, he gently resumes massaging her, and she takes in a great shuddering breath and seems to slump beneath his touch. He has no idea what's wrong, but she doesn't want him to stop, so he figures it must feel good and he becomes captivated with the caress and flow of his hands across her dry, freckled skin, with focusing as much care and energy into their motion as he would to perfecting any attack combination with his sai. It feels good to make her feel good, even if she is crying for some unknown reason and he slides one hand softly up her back, her neck, into the silky smoothness of her hair, over her scalp and she makes a small, helpless noise that prompts him to wrap his other arm around her waist and draw her back against him as he gently strokes her head, relishing the way her hair feels sliding between his fingers, tickling his plastron. His arm could wrap nearly double around her waist and she folds easily against him, the soft, worn material of her dress just brushing his tail. Whatever's happening, he feels uneasy with the intensity of his own emotions and is glad Amber has her head bowed still.

A moment later she starts, gives her head a little shake and he drops his hand.

"You want a blowjob?" she asks him in a voice that strives too hard to sound normal, and for some reason he is unsettled and confused, staring at the back of her head.

"I'm okay," he replies.

She sniffs wetly. "You sure?"

"Yeah," he says, and cannot help himself from stroking her hair again, his hand running down the long, soft mane that sweeps over her shoulder, and he hears her inhale, sees how she tilts her head backwards into his touch.

Abruptly, she turns around, straight into his arms, her wet cheek pressed to his plastron, her fingertips curling against it and he enfolds her tight and close.


	15. Chapter 13

"Let's go out tonight."

She looks up at him from where she's idly brushing her hair, mildly surprised.

He's standing near the window, arms folded, looking moodily out into the shambolic alleyway below, still clad in the silver uniform he wears as the Nightwatcher. The lamp she keeps by the mattress is off, its bare bulb dark and cold. She cannot see his face, but she can hear the need that tints his voice.

"You wanna get a room?" she queries him, jamming her brush back into her bag. The idea has been playing at her mind lately. There'd have to be a way to pull it off. Even as grotty as the motel rooms are, they're better kitted out than her crummy place. With the weather getting colder all the time, there's something nice about the idea of being cosy together in a bed, watching shitty late night television.

He paces across the room, cracking his knuckles. "Nah."

She's pulling on her scratched old pink boots, fingers trembling a little. "You wanna go to our roof?" Shit. When it had become "our" roof?

"No. I wanna go _out_," he says testily and she rolls her eyes as she finishes tying her laces. In one of those moods.

"Okay," she replies dryly. "Where?"

He huffs, spins on his heel, heavy boots clomping on the bare wood, the faint city glow that emanates through the window gleaming off the metallic leather that conceals the more appealing sight of his musculature.

"Well, where do _you_ wanna go?" he retorts, and the first stab of annoyance splinters across her chest.

"You're the one who wants to go out," she snips back, snatching a cigarette out of her pack.

He sighs heavily, crosses his arms over his plastron, and she can feel the weight of his glare as she lights up.

"Well, I don't wanna sit in this fuckin' room all night," he blurts. "Ain't there someplace you'd _like_ to go?"

She puffs on her cigarette, frowning. There's none that she can think of. She's happy staying put, her last fix a lingering pleasant heaviness in her limbs, could still snuggle up and drift away for a while. She glances up at him, but his face is still shadowed, concealing his expression. She senses he's had a slow night – there's a barely-constrained restlessness to him, his bunched muscles, the tight neck and clenched fists, like it's all he can do to keep it below his skin and any second it'll rip and tear out of him in some gust of fury and glee.

Shit, if he's that antsy, why doesn't he just come over and fuck her?

"I dunno," she replies finally. "Thought you musta had someplace in mind."

"I just – " and he stops and gusts out in frustration before saying in a rush: "I just wanna take you out someplace."

For a moment, she cannot think of anything to say. There is something unexpectedly painful unfurling in her chest, like a bud whose petals are being forced open before they're ready.

"Oh," she manages at length. "You mean like a date?"

"Forget it," he growls, turning towards the window and the duffel bag beneath it, his head down and shoulders up, ready to walk out on her.

"Coney Island."

He halts, his broad shoulders dimly outlined in the window, but does not turn back.

"Still gonna take me?" she presses him drolly, trying to sound like she doesn't care. "Now you got my hopes up?"

His shoulders fall and he slowly spins. "Okay," he says gruffly.

She stubs out her cigarette and reaches her nicotine-stained fingers out. "Help me up?"

Raphael takes the two steps, clasps her hand in his enormous gloved one and tugs her easily to her feet. So easily, she stumbles against him and he steadies her with hands on her hips and that silver leather is warm against her breasts. This close, she can see the dim sheen of his eyes, the grave set to his mouth. She wants to kiss him, but resists. She couldn't even say why.

She clings to him tightly as the motorbike roars the dusty streets to Coney Island, the wind lashing at her arms and knees, making her wish he hadn't made her wear a helmet, that she could feel her hair streaming out behind her as well. The streets whip past them in streaks of colour and shadow and she could swear they are floating, so untethered does she feel. They're not supposed to do this anymore; be seen in public. But surely they hurtle by so fast she's nothing more than a blur, a wisp, a trick played by light.

They tool to a stop nearby Deno's, and as he kills the motor she tips her head back and gazes at the Wonder Wheel where it brushes the sky, an intricate web of steel bars long darkened when the park shut some hours earlier.

"This okay?" he asks her, his voice low, she thinks, to conceal the trace of self-consciousness that tinges it. He's not looking at her, packing her helmet into the deep compartment below the seat.

She looks back up at the ferris wheel, and something inside her soars. "Yeah," she replies.

There's a bite to the air that makes her glad he made her wear a hoodie as they walk quietly through the abandoned park, the darkened neon somehow haunting in its hollow state, devoid of the captivating glitter and flash that so enlivened the place when fully illuminated. Now it is just a plastic menagerie of looming shadows that haunt the beach; the flying elephants frozen midair, their painted smiles eerie in the moonlight, the ponies on the carousel arrested in an endless gallop, the brilliantly coloured fibreglass balloons on the Samba now dull blues and blacks in the hushed night, tilted forever on the cusp of floating away out over the Atlantic.

Raphael reaches out and takes her hand, enclosing it wholly within his calloused palm, and a little shiver runs through her; his flesh is warm from the gloves he stripped back at the bike, from gripping the handlebars, and her chilled skin welcomes his touch.

In unspoken agreement, they amble to the Wonder Wheel, and the closer they get, the taller it seems, until they are right beneath it and she is tipping her head back, unable to spot the point at which it kisses the sky.

"Let's go to the top," he says, and she looks at him. He's staring upwards too, quietly contemplating the vanishing cusp of the massive structure.

"How?" she asks him.

He looks at her, and she can see, even in the dark, the quiet grin that spreads across his wide face.

"I'll carry you," he replies.

When he puts her over his shoulder and begins easily clambering the vast steel beams that thread the wheel together, she isn't sure what scares her more: the lurch and tilt of the distant dark ground as it falls away below her, or his easy confidence, the effortless and blasé ascent he makes like she's nothing more than a pack slung over his arm, like they aren't climbing one hundred and fifty feet into the sky with nothing but his calloused grip and the strain of his muscles to keep them anchored in place. He has carried her like this before, but never so high, never so long, never in such precarious surroundings and she hitches in a breath and hooks her fingers beneath the scutes on his carapace as he leaps and catches hold of a beam above, far out of her sight, hauls them up easily.

"How you doin' up there?" he asks her when he is standing solid and she can hear the new lightness in his voice; realises the adventure is scratching the itch he couldn't sate out on the streets earlier, that he's enjoying himself a whole damn lot. And isn't even a little winded.

"This view better be fuckin' worth it," she mutters darkly back and he laughs and pats her rump before resuming his mission.

She shuts her eyes so that it seems she sways and jolts only in space and wishes she were more stoned than she is because maybe then the spinning tip in her head might be enjoyable. She opens them again and contemplates the curious fact that if she were to fall right then, she would unquestionably die, nothing but a splatter of blood and bone on the dark concrete far below them.

Funnily enough, she's not scared. She anchors her fingertips in Raphael's shell and feels the solid mass of his body beneath hers, sure and strong and true.

Then Raphael leaps and for an endless moment they are suspended in space, her heartbeat arresting in the instant before gravity can claim them, and then there is the sudden jerk as his powerful arms counteract the inevitable fall, finding their mark unerringly, grasping hold of the final beam and hauling both of them up and onto it.

"Piece'a cake," he huffs, and she is trembling as he reaches over to the old-fashioned white gondola and springs the catch, and in the next instant they are inside as it careens wildly back and forth beneath their weight and he is laughing and she realises she is too.

For a moment they simply sit, opposite each other, as the gondola rocks back and forth, laughing breathlessly. As it slows, the gut-upending swing steadying to a gentle sway, she smirks at him and fumbles in her hoodie for her cigarettes.

"Show off," she mutters, clasping one between her lips, flicking her lighter on.

He merely raises his hands, palms up, shit eating grin stretching across his muzzle.

Nonchalantly, she shifts over to his side, sliding in next to him, and just as casually he drapes an arm around her shoulders. Her heart beat is slowing, no longer an echo in her ears, and she turns to look out the window and is abruptly captivated by what she beholds.

Beyond the Boardwalk, the city stretches before them, seemingly endless, vanishing into the horizon with the distant wink of light. Here at the peninsular, the high rises of the city seem a lifetime away, their dark silhouettes beset with thousands of glimmering eyes, crowding the landscape – they seem so still. It is impossible to imagine the teeming life that bustles within and around them; with the parks closed and abandoned, it is bizarrely quiet, as though that skyline is no more than a postcard, or a mirage. Amber has never realised how much the endless traffic and constant buzz of people have composed the soundtrack to her life until right then, suspended hundreds of feet in the air and miles away from it all, in an abandoned theme park with a mutant turtle sitting beside her. They could be the only two people on earth.

She turns to look at Raphael and he leans forward and kisses her. Despite the chill whipped through the grilles, a warmth pools in her chest and spreads to touch every inch of her. It's so rare yet that he makes the first move. She thinks she'll let him carry her up the Statue of Liberty next, if it means he'll kiss her like this more often; sweet but sure, his heavy arm coaxing her in close against him.

The kiss ebbs, and she feels her cheeks flush as he pulls away, his green eyes forest dark as he looks at her.

"This was a great idea," she says softly, as her cigarette smoulders between her fingers. She looks away, ashes it at their feet. "Thanks."

He shrugs diffidently, turns to survey the skyline. But she can tell he is pleased.

She peers out the window down to the park below. In New York City, with the glow of a billion lights reflecting off the clouds, there are few places of total darkness, and she can make out the hulking rides and concession stands that dot the Midway. It's funny, she's not sure why she asked him to bring her here. Perhaps because in the six years she has been in New York, she's never once come to Coney Island. She tries to imagine it by day, the sun baking the cement, metal scorching to the touch, the endless crowds that flow throughout the hours, the aroma of popcorn and cotton candy. By night, before closing, bejewelled with technicolour neon, the roar of the rides mingling with the surf, a thousand screaming voices in a cacophony of joy.

She thinks they should come here again sometime, when it's open. Then she remembers why they can't.

Again she turns her head, and now she is gazing out across the Atlantic, and her breath catches in her throat. Its perfect darkness stretches far beyond the limits of the city, vast and impenetrable, making her feel that they hung, poised, at the very brink of the world and it was not the horizon she gazed into, but time itself.

She doesn't realise she's shivering until he tightens his arm around her, reaches forward and wraps one great paw around hers.

"You're like ice," he comments; in his concern he sounds a little irritated. He is never as warm as a human, but right then he feels like a furnace and she edges in close to him. The heat of his palm makes her acutely aware of each chilled finger and she thinks about reminding him all the collapsed veins in her arms means she has piss-poor circulation.

Instead she kisses him.

He kisses her back and the engulfing heat of his huge mouth sends tingles through her body that quickly warm her. Their mouths part and their tongues meet and she angles her head to accommodate his broad snout, her other hand reaching out to slide along the thickness of his neck. He releases her hand, wraps his arm around her waist and she feels the flutter in her tummy become a gale as his thumb gently strokes her ribcage, setting off a rush of nerves that hardens her nipple.

For the longest time they simply make out, the gondola gently swaying as they embrace and kiss and breathe into each other, and she's never known anything like this, not quite like this.

When they finally stop, it is only long enough to catch the dim glitter of light off of each other's eyes in the darkness, and she is panting, her thin chest seeming to swell beneath the tide of her desire, his plastron heaving in syncopated rhythm, and then he leans forward again and once more they are fused, immersed, consumed in each other, in the delirium that is simply kissing.

It might be hours before they have tasted enough of each other, for the time, and draw apart. Amber licks her lips; they are swollen and tender from his attentions. She wonders if he feels the same soft buzz, echoed in her heart. She rests her head on his shoulder and he lets his cheek press against the top of her head, and their fingers twine.

"You know I never been here before," she comments after a while. He stirs a little.

"Really? Even I been to Coney Island a few times," he replies. She fidgets, slightly irritated by his surprise.

"Whoopy-do," she mutters and he nudges her.

"Hey," he chides. "Don't get pissy. I ain't judgin'."

At least he caught on.

"First time, me and my bros snuck in – I guess we were about twelve." She can feel his cheek move as he grins to recollect. "Claimed it was to test out our ninja skills. Course, Master Splinter woulda had our tails for soup if he'd known."

She likes it when he talks about his childhood, listens quietly as she imagines four young mutant turtles, creeping along the Boardwalk some uncanny hour of the night, never able to experience what it is like by the light of day, or to play with other children.

"Don switched on a bunch of the rides," he continues, and she snorts a little laugh and he squeezes her hand. "We had a blast. Then the cops showed up and we hadda hightail it. It was a pretty ace test in the end – you try being invisible in a yard of blinkin' neon."

She grins and nestles in further under his arm, her cheek now brushing the textured surface of his plastron.

"What was your favourite ride?"

"Prob'ly the freight train we hitched to get away from the cops."

She snickers, and his hand lifts from her shoulder to idly stroke her hair. She's lulled by the caress, stares dreamily ahead to where the horizon is suddenly defined, the faintest streaks of light separating ocean from sky. A distant stirring has begun in her bloodstream, a budding antsiness that makes her open and close her hands, shift on the seat next to Raphael. She's gonna need to fix soon.

"But you musta been to amusement parks when you were a kid," he says to her curiously, and the vague anxiety intensifies. Of course, he's been getting into this lately: sharing. Quid pro fucking quo.

"Oh yeah," she hears herself say, jamming her voice with a brightness to reflect the encroaching dawn. "All the time. Never the same one twice. Every summer, we'd pack up the SUV and set out to try out a new one. I had an album, filled with ticket stubs from every one we ever been to, right from when I was a little kid." She's starting to warm into the story now, her palms slightly sweaty, her heart a nervous flutter and the sick tug of yearning steadily growing more insistent. "We had this game we'd always play: we'd bet on who could pull the funniest face on the roller coaster, or the water slide, or whatever the fuck, and then we'd get my mom to choose and whoever won got as much cotton candy as they wanted, for the whole stay."

Raphael is silent, staring out across the water where the first shimmer of gold is beginning to speckle, far, far in the distance. "Sounds nice." He sounds a little bitter, a little wistful, a little charmed. It makes her wish she was telling the truth. "So what was _your_ fave ride?"

She tries to think, the threads of her mind snarling and straggling in and over each other. She's really starting to hang out now, and nausea wiggles unpleasantly in her gut. It's psychosomatic at this stage of course, she knows that, but her pulse still rises. She had learned quickly to feign disinterest, to affect apathy towards anything that counted as a treat. If it wasn't offered, it was one less thing to endure while her heart dully thudded within a chest strained so tight each breath felt like it had to be dragged into her lungs, counting down with numbed dread to the inescapable end.

She can feel that same tightening in her chest now. The quiet, restless nag gathering in her blood is on the cusp of becoming a roar if she doesn't find some other way to stifle it, and it'll be at least an hour until she can get to a needle, that awareness making her eyes prick, her heart painfully mash.

The indigo sky is slowly, steadily retreating as the sun edges over the horizon and he's made no indication they should move. Even though they should. Getting back to the bike, getting him back into the suit – it's a risk he can't afford. Then again, taking risks is all he's done since she's known him. Fuck, she probably counts as one.

"This one," she blurts desperately.

He looks at her curiously. "The ferris wheel?"

She glances over at him; it is just light enough now that she can see the dense green of his eyes, the scar that intersects the ridge over the left one. In the chill dawn, she feels clammy and breathless and wants him to hold her, crush her close and tight until she can't feel anything.

"No," she says, and looks edgily away to the sky streaked pink and gold and white, to the gold that glitters across the water. She squeezes his hand, savours how the powerful muscles resist. The weight of his arm around her shoulders anchors her as her bloodstream becomes an urgent buzz. "This one."

Raphael doesn't reply, but she can feel him watching her. After a long moment, he tugs her closer and she rests her head on his shoulder and he presses his cheek against her hair and together they witness the morning, even though they shouldn't, even though they both need to go. As the sun rises, she turns her face to his and they kiss as the first golden rays warm their skin, bathe them in light, and she wishes it could always be like this.


	16. Chapter 14

Raphael can't stop staring at the bed.

In the bathroom, he hears the toilet flush, and he shifts, his shell scraping the wall with a rustle, and swallows hard.

The bed is nothing fancy. Just a double bed on a cheap frame, nasty old patterned cover draped over a lumpy mattress that's probably blotched with countless terrifying stains. But it's a bed.

He hears the running of water as she washes her hands, and his toes curl slightly against the musty and vaguely sticky brown carpet as anticipation stirs in his chest.

They haven't fucked on a bed yet.

The bathroom door clicks open and she enters, replete in a pink dress that once belonged to a child, Wonder Woman posed on the front, 'GIRL POWER' emblazoned over her black curls. Amber stops by the lopsided table in the corner, raises her clear blue eyes to his and the touch of a smile quirks her lips. He feels his tail stir.

She runs thin, raw-fingered hands back through impossibly long red hair, gathering it all together at the base of her neck and twisting an elastic band around it in a deft motion so that it hangs down her back in a ponytail. Just the sight of the practiced flick of her wrists, the long pale curve of her neck and the moment of carelessness in her eyes makes his throat dry with desire and his arms tense where they are crossed over his plastron.

Raphael wants to go to her, take her in his arms and strip her bare. But here now he's just a little unsure of this intimacy. Even though it's been months now, even though she's never once been hesitant or reluctant. It feels safer to let her initiate. He has so much to lose, after all.

Amber goes into the knapsack she's left jumbled on the table, pulls out a bottle of gin, uncaps it for a swig and his eyes shift to the bed again. He's never cared for beds, particularly. Lying flat on your shell ain't exactly comfortable and he hasn't been inclined to adapt to curling on his side the way his brothers do. Mikey's bed is piled with pillows, a suffocating marshmallow of a nest. Don built himself a loft bed, under which he keeps yet more computers. Leo favours a traditional futon which is at least simple, but that's still too flat for Raphael's taste. He has a hammock. He can lie however he likes within its comfortable cradle. It's practical, takes up little space, and is entirely unfussy.

But the thought of laying down on a bed for the purpose of having sex with the woman he supposes is his girlfriend now – well. Something about it is irresistibly appealing.

Amber has languidly crossed the room and is fiddling with the battered old clock radio on the wood veneer side table, searching for something good for them to get off to. He's still not experienced enough to be sure, but he thinks she might be teasing him; building the tension, making him wait. She's bent at the waist and that long ponytail has fallen over her shoulder, the dirty yellow bulb of the lamp setting embers ablaze in her hair. She doesn't look so sallow in the dim glow and the short skirt of her dress is hitched up at the back.

So far they've only fucked on the thin, bare mattress she has in her squat, or in the few dusty and secluded places they've discovered together across the city. This bed – as old and stained as it is, as squalid as their surroundings are in this dingy little thirty-buck-a-night motel room – seems a suddenly impossible luxury and he finds himself rather badly wanting to stretch out on it with her and make love, the way regular couples do.

Amber settles on Johnny Cash and straightens up, turning to him with a little smile and tossing that heavy ponytail back over her shoulder in a way that sends a pulse through his tail.

She draws up close to him and tilts her head back, gazing at him through lidded eyes. "Hey," she says with studied nonchalance.

His hands itch to touch her, but he keeps them firmly crossed. "Hey," he replies, equally as cool.

Her chapped pink lips twitch, then she closes her eyes so that her pale red lashes rest on her cheeks, and leans forward. As she draws in close his eye is taken by the freckles that cluster together just at the right corner of her nose and then he shuts them just as her lips press to his mouth.

Even now, after months, the first kiss makes his knees turn molten and threaten to give way beneath him. It's a profoundly unsettling sensation he is determined never to betray so he slips his arms quickly about her nothing waist and pulls her against him as their mouths open against each other and their tongues meet. She tastes of gin, and nicotine, and the distinct flavour that is simply her own, something that is unexpectedly sweet beneath the roughened voice and flinty eyes, and it prompts him to thrust his tongue forward, the wet heat of her mouth making him think helplessly of how it feels when he's inside her and then he's quickly walking her backwards to the bed.

Her knees hit the mattress and she abruptly sits down and he pushes her back and lowers himself over her as they continue to kiss, their veneer of cool forgotten as breathing grows heavier, as tongues twine and lips are tugged yearningly between teeth. He's really starting to get the hang of this. He's sure of it, because it feels better every time.

Then one of her slim hands is pushing up against his plastron and she's turning her head away from his mouth and his gut is suddenly lurching as a bolt of fearful adrenalin rackets through his heart.

But then she is only looking up at him from coy and inviting eyes, and this close he sees how each orange eyelash fades to pure white at the tip.

"Come fuck me on the table," she murmurs to him, gesturing with a flick of her head.

He's startled, and glances over to the corner of the shitty motel room where the round, scuffed table sits, looking precarious. On the wall beside it there is a large, dirty brownish-grey stain of water damage.

Normally he doesn't argue much with what she says. After all, he _is_ getting laid, he's still pretty unsure of himself, and most of the time they don't have many options. But right now they've got a motel room and a bed, so why the fuck would they use the table?

He looks back down at her, feels his forehead pucker. "Let's stay on the bed," he replies, and something flashes fierce in her eyes.

"I'd prefer on the table," she presses her lips quickly to his, pulls back and he knows she's trying to make it sound inviting. But it's _not_. Christ knows, he likes a quick and dirty fuck up against a wall now and then, but they've _got a bed_. An actual, proper bed, in an actual proper room, even if it is disgusting. Why wouldn't she want to take it slow and easy, enjoy a little comfort for a change? He can't imagine a hard surface feels that good against her bony ass.

"Why?" he asks her bluntly, and the faintest frown flickers across her freckled brow.

"Cos I do," she says tensely, pushing up against him and he lets her up, shifting to the side. She stands and saunters over to the table, looks back at him challengingly. "I want you to fuck me on the table."

He's horny as hell and when she gives him that defiant, brazen little stare he only gets worked up more (she knows it too) and for a moment he is tempted to just let it go and do what she wants.

But the truth is, he's disappointed. They can't do much on the table. And since they've got a room, _and a fucking bed_, it doesn't make any fucking sense to him.

So he just stands by the bed and looks at her.

"But we got a bed," he points out, gesturing to it with one hand, his brow creased in a frown.

By the table, Amber shifts edgily, scowl beginning to contort her features. "You wanna get laid at all tonight, you'll come over here."

That gets his hackles up and he finds himself glaring back at her, the stirring of his temper like a slow boil in his chest. He might not know much about relationships, but he's pretty sure blackmail ain't on the level.

"Can't we just do it on the bed?" he starts, unable to keep frustration bursting through the gruff notes of his voice. "That thing looks like it'll fuckin' break the second I – "

"_I don't wanna fuck on the bed_!" she shrieks, transformed abruptly from languid, dissolute poseur to a red-faced savage, teeth bared and hands balled into fists by her sides, bent forward at the waist and glaring at him with wide, crazed eyes.

"Well you don't gotta fuckin' yell at me," he shouts back automatically, unsettled and enraged by the abrupt flare of temper, and she starts pacing frantically, teeth still gritted, strands of hair coming loose from the elastic and wisping around her head as she moves. "I don't see why we can't be comfortable for a change."

She comes to a stop and stares venomously at him, her bony chest heaving up and down and though she's pressed her lips shut now he can see how tense her jaw is. But he's pissed off too, cos he doesn't understand what the fuck is going on or why she's making all this fuss over nothing.

"What's the big fucking deal, Alex?" Raphael has lowered his voice but is still brusque, aggressive. "Why don't you wanna be on the bed?"

She looks like a cornered rat as she faces him off, her thin, freckled arms crossing tightly across her chest though her eyes remain savage on his.

"Well, you've seen me naked, Raphael," she says in a low, harsh voice. "Is it really so fuckin' hard to figure out?"

For a moment her words don't make sense. Then he glances at the bed, and the flash of movement beyond catches his eye; he looks up and sees the mirror mounted on the wall.

He's struck dumb by the sight of his own reflection; he doesn't spend a lot of time in front of mirrors himself, as a rule, and when he does he is concentrating on the arrangement and formation of his body, focused only on perfecting the technique of the martial arts that are such a prominent fixture in his life. Now he sees himself, muscular and plated in textured armour, the enormous, immensely powerful hands he always has to take care with and the rim of the shell that rises above his shoulders, the green skin and his face – his unquestionably inhuman face – and the stern expression that burdens his features.

He is discomfited and looks back at Amber, who continues to glare at him furiously, her head lowered and shoulders hunched up and he can see how much she hated revealing that to him, and it strikes him as faintly ludicrous – after all, _he's the fucking mutant_ – but nonetheless a pang flares in his chest as he looks at her in all her defensive wrath.

It had never occurred to him that it mattered to her, the way she looked. It seemed like countless people – from the cops, to drunken revellers in cars lurching past, to the men who had taken her because of him – cruelly, brutally called her ugly and she never flinched, barely seemed even to notice. The sheer violence of her revelation here seems to maul desperate lacerations across his heart as he wonders what else she might be concealing beneath the brazen indifference that had so first taken his interest. He is suddenly, hopelessly consumed with tenderness and concern for her and almost recoils himself from the unexpected intensity of these feelings, still so new and unfamiliar to him.

Amber continues to heave with silent, panting breaths as her eyes boil with resentment and threat, her arms crossed so tight around her she seems trying to shrink herself, and he has no fucking idea what to do.

The only thing he knows for sure, and the knowledge hits him full blown and complete even as the thought crosses his mind, is that telling her she's beautiful would be a huge fucking mistake.

So instead, Raphael simply crosses the room to her. She eyes him warily, still panting, her eyes huge and wild, her lips slack, and he's further sure that, even if he could think of something to say, _any _words at all will only make things worse.

When he picks her up and puts her on the table, the tension ebbs somewhat from her thin body and her legs part easily for him and then she grasps his head with her hands and kisses him furiously, violently and he responds quickly, his tail fully descending, his cock emerging. It's not so hard for him to understand this savagery, when the only other option might be to cry, and he finds her desperate aggression a turn on as their mouths maul each other, as his hands hungrily, roughly roam her slight figure above the thin pink cotton.

She releases his head to grasp at the hem of the dress, starts wiggling it upwards and he catches hold of it and finishes the job, and her pale, bony body seems ghost-like in the dim glow of the lamp, painfully insubstantial, and it makes him want to hold her very close, very tight. She's fumbled the lubricant from her knapsack and squeezes a generous amount onto his erection and he flinches a little at the sudden cold but then her hand is wrapped around him, rubbing the slick substance all over his rigid shaft, and their mouths meet again in breathless passion as he takes hold of her fragile hips and she grasps the rim of his carapace and urges him forward.

Raphael thrusts inside her in one forceful, decisive movement and immediately begins to pound her as sensation floods him in a powerful deluge, as the feeling of her slight and trembling body in his arms wakens something primal and demanding inside of him, as her arms wrap around his neck and their kisses grow messier and more gasping. It's funny, he'd really wanted the foreplay tonight. Not that he objects, generally, but tonight, with the bed there, it seemed more special somehow. It hardly matters now though, with her wet heat enveloping him tightly and urging the rapid rocking of his hips so that she makes a thousand little noises into his mouth and he can tell she is holding onto him as hard as she possibly can, though it feels like nothing, though he could break free of her grasp as easily as shaking off rain.

Amber bites his lip hard, meanly, and it urges him to grip her hips harder and drive into her with greater force and she gasps and buries her face in his neck, fingernails digging into his shoulders and those little nips of pain make him more savage still. The table is rocking violently, dangerously and he's pretty sure it's not gonna survive the exertion, but somehow through the fog of his lust he realises it doesn't have to, and scoops Amber up and presses her against the wall, holding her easily and effortlessly as he fucks her.

He can feel the slack muscle of her thighs in his palms, the smooth dryness of her skin, taste her sweat as his mouth moves to her neck, can hear the rustle and squelch of the femidon inside her as he moves. Condoms proved just too uncomfortable for him and she refused to even entertain the notion of sex without protection. He's desperate to know what she feels like around his cock without the barrier of plastic between them but it doesn't ever seem likely. It doesn't matter right then; he's mindless with pleasure and she's worked a hand between them and is rubbing herself, her head tipped back against the yellowing wall, her eyes squeezed shut and a furrow between her brows.

And he looks at her, at the skin jammed so endlessly with pale orange freckles and her tiny breasts with the puffy pink nipples, the terribly prominent bones of her clavicle and her ribs, the abruptly stark white flesh of her belly, disrupted by bruises and scars of various origins. His eyes trace her hands with the cracked and raw knuckles, the bony arms littered so painfully in welts of red and purple, her thin face with the sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. Her chapped lower lip is tugged between her teeth, her nostrils flare, her lashes cast thin shadows on her cheeks and he sees suddenly how very young she is, not much older than himself, even though she's lived enough for ten lifetimes over.

And he realises that he could've said she was beautiful, and it would've been true. Because sometime in these last few weeks every raw and ragged detail of her has become precious and perfect beneath the caress of his gaze and he can't understand how he ever thought she was ugly to begin with.

Amber's spine arches and her brow smooths, her lashes fluttering as the softest moan slips from her lips, then she is slumping forward to bury her face in his neck again as he feels her pulse around him. "Raphael," she whimpers quietly, in a way that makes his breath catch, and moments later he has followed her into that final ecstasy, striving not to crush her in his delirious efforts to bring her as close as possible to the very heart of him.

For long, breathless moments they stay simply joined, her legs slack around his waist, arms limp around his neck, her face tucked into the crook of his neck so that he can feel every hot gust of breath she heavily exhales. Her body is trembling and it makes him realise so is his as he supports her against the wall, his arms scooped beneath her thighs, his sweaty face buried in her hair so that strands of it stick to his skin. His heart continues to pound thunderously in his chest, seeming to take an age to slow, and he wonders if she can feel it where her small breasts press against his plastron, wonders if the echo of her heart is lost within the beat of his.

Then she abruptly speaks, her voice quiet and rough, muffled by his own flesh: "Of course I'd rather fuck on the bed, Raphael."

It breaks his heart a little.

He puts her down carefully, gently on the table, his knees feeling alarmingly weak as he moves. He lets his cock soften and naturally recede, rather than pull from her – they've learned from experience there's a hell of a mess otherwise, though even this way only minimises it. She's already grasped the towel she'd fetched from the bathroom before he even got there and thrusts it between her legs as her fingers expertly pinch shut the edges of the femidom and carefully tug it free from her body. Though she treats it with practical indifference, he's always embarrassed by this part and turns away slightly, scratching the back of his head with a thick finger, though he's compelled by some strange guilt to stay close by.

She slides off the table and wobbles a little on her feet so that he snaps to attention, ready to support her, but she just takes the two steps to the bin and deposits the femidom inside, then drops the soiled towel to the carpet beside it. He realises that she'd placed the towel on the table from the start, that she'd planned all along where they were gonna fuck, and the awareness of just how much she cares hits him like one of Leo's best roundhouses to the plastron.

"You paid in cash, right?" he asks her as she turns back to him with that wide-eyed, slightly bruised look she always has after. It makes him want to envelop her in his arms, but he's not ready to give that away. She cocks a brow.

"Course," she replies.

"They get an ID?"

Her mouth quirks a little, wryly. "They got _an_ ID."

He rubs a calloused palm over his snout, turns and strides to the wall with the mirror on it, grasps it on either side and gives it a firm tug.

Sure enough, with the screech of ripping paint, it comes free from the wall relatively easy, leaving behind a rectangle of dried glue and exposed concrete. He hoists the mirror as he turns it around to face the wall, lets it slide through his grasp to the carpet, then lets it rest.

Fuck, it's not like he was all that keen to watch himself having sex either.

Raphael turns back to Amber, knowing full well she might be furious at this acknowledgement of her resentful confession, pretty much expecting it if he's gonna be honest, but fuck it all, they've got the room for the whole goddamn night and is it such a big deal that he wants to lie down on an actual bed with his girl, like they're a regular couple?

Amber is staring at him strangely, her naked body seemingly hopelessly frail and vulnerable in the half light, despite all her defiant resilience, and her expression contorts and flickers with a painful motley of emotions that makes her suddenly terribly desirable.

Then she snorts, flicks a loose lock of hair back over her shoulder, gives him a sardonic grin. "Such a fuckin' rebel."

"Just get on the fuckin' bed," he replies, but he's grinning too.

Much, much later, after they've given each other head a coupla times and he thinks he might actually be starting to figure the whole thing out, and fucked again, they get under the covers and switch on the shitty old TV and watch terrible late night television while they share her gin and she looks up at him from where she's nestled under his arm and smiles in that way that makes her truly, perfectly beautiful.

"Look at us, like a regular couple," she says, and there is nothing at all wry or sarcastic in her voice.


	17. Chapter 15

She forces herself not to hurry as she clatters up the stairway of the tenement, her boots echoing on rotting wood long stripped bare of any carpet. There is no hurry. Hurrying won't make him get there any faster, hurrying won't make time move forward any different. Besides, he might be late, and if he is she's wasted even more energy. Fuck that.

Not like she's counting the seconds any old how. She sees him almost nightly after all. It's no big deal.

The stairs creak beneath her tread as she rounds a landing and continues on her way, her bony knees aching after a night spent on her feet, after a thousand nights on her feet, trampling the city streets underneath. There is enough light coming in through the bare windows to show her the way, the graffitied walls and the peeling banister, the scabbed and split stairs. She reaches her floor and glances down the gloomy corridor. A thin strip of light gleams beneath a door. One of her neighbours is awake.

She starts down the other way, heading straight into the inky blackness that buries the hall, counts her steps until she's level with her door and reaches out into the shadows and it opens under the press of her fingertips, the hinges releasing a slow whine that is unnervingly loud in the dark.

The latch bolt he installed for her slides easily into place and then she cannot help glancing at the window, glancing to see if his bulk fills the frame.

It hangs, empty and blue, the distant glow of the city illuminating the room in shades of grey and indigo.

She tosses her backpack down, slumps onto the mattress that is her bed and switches on the small lamp beside it. The bare bulb glows soft yellow, casting a sphere of light she nestles within as she tugs tiredly at the laces of her boots, relief flooding up her skinny legs as she pushes them off her feet, kicks them away, already fumbling for a cigarette.

He'll be there soon, and she takes a deep draw on her smoke, her blood tingling as the drug hits her system, entwining with the flutter in her heart provoked by that thought until she cannot tell one from the other.

She holds the cigarette clasped loosely between her lips and runs a brush through her hair, pulling the long, heavy locks over her shoulder as they unsnarl beneath the rhythmic passage of the bristles. She counts to a hundred, staring doggedly at the fraying corners of the hole in the rumpled old sheet underneath her. Then she glances towards the window but it stays empty, the night sky velvet deep beyond.

There is no way to measure time in the decrepit little room, beyond the steady thump of her heartbeat and the cigarette butts she stubs into the old noodle bowl she's using as an ashtray. She makes herself a cup of scalding hot instant coffee, black and thick with sweetener, and starts the next Alex Cross novel and the next time she glances at the window, the sky beyond is not as deep, not as dark, and when her heart flutters then it is painful.

And she feels like a fucking idiot.

She sees him most nights, after all. She's not a fucking kid. This isn't a fucking movie.

She rubs her raw red eyes with icy fingers, blinks against the weariness she's been fighting back and remembers the little gold box she'd stolen from a client earlier that night. It's fallen to the very bottom of her backpack, beneath the diaper bags and baby wipes and purse bulging with condoms, but she finds it finally, cold metal beneath bony fingertips, and opens it to reveal the razor blade and the little spoon, the gold straw and the fine white powder within.

She fixes two lines, rolls the straw between her fingers and for just a moment she hesitates. If she's coked up she'll get shitty with him for being late. And then he'll get shitty at her for being coked up. And they'll fight, and he'll leave and she'll ride out the rest of the high alone, unable to sleep for long enough that she'll be unable to ignore how awful it is to greet another day without having been in his arms.

But it's just a moment. Then she's hunching over the mirrored lid and snorting back the acrid powder, her sinuses flaring, her eyes pricking, the bitter taste tainting the back of her throat.

She leans back against the wall, tips her head back and presses her eyes shut as her blood begins to roar.

Sometimes he's late. It's not a big fucking deal.

She glances down at the box, picks it up in a hand that tingles all over, peers at her reflection in the mirror fitted to the inner lid. It doesn't matter what she looks like. He's seen it all before. But still, she looks, and then she wishes she hadn't. Blood shot eyes sunken in shadows, a thousand freckles dusting bone pale skin, sallow in the dusky light of the lamp. Her pupils are huge, suddenly, and she finds herself staring into herself, into pitch black pits that seem to only grow wider and darker until she's tumbling into them, falling straight forward into her own fucking reflection which seems to retreat as rapidly as she falls so that she falls endlessly, ever on the brink of being swallowed whole.

She throws the little gold box at the wall and the straw and the spoon clatter to the floor, white powder ghosting the air and she curses loudly cos that was about six hundred dollars worth of coke and she coulda fucking sold it.

And she looks over to the window again, but he isn't there.

Then her gaze is trailing the miserable little room she lives in, empty save for the books jammed against the wall, and the box of clothes, and the mattress, with its scabby walls endlessly layered in lurid graffiti, at the grotty doorway that leads into the tiny bathroom with its yellowing tiles and her heart is pounding and she has the strangest feeling she's dislodged just a little from her body, like her spirit is a skin half shed, and she cannot believe that this is her life and she remembers all at once why she completely fucking hates cocaine.

And where the fuck is he?

The buzz has become a burr now, a grating at the fringes of her mind that compels her to leap up and pace the small room, the floorboards rough and dusty against her bare feet, arms crossing tight over her chest to keep them from jangling at her sides. He's been hassling her to get a phone and for the first time she thinks maybe she shoulda listened, cos if she had she'd know where he is right now. And she goes to the window and looks beyond, to the broken and battered alleyway that is dim grey in the chill early morning, and she knows that even if he is all right – even if he hasn't been seriously fucked up or gunned down – there's no way he's coming now.

She lights a cigarette, stands in the window frame and watches the sky lighten, shivering as the cold dawn slips steadily over the alley way, her eyes feeling too wide, too open. She thinks about all of the things that might've happened to him to keep him from coming to her, and her heartbeat rushes til she feels sick with it.

She chucks the smouldering butt of her cigarette out the window where it plummets to the cracked old sidewalk, sputtering embers upon impact. Her eyes are dry as glass baked in the sun, her mouth feels raw. She stomps to the bathroom and drinks handfuls of water from the tap over the sink and when she looks where the mirror should be imbedded in the cabinet door, she sees only the gutted and rusting hollow that was left behind when it was shattered, long before she ever arrived.

Drug-addled, her mind is fervent with imagination. She knows what he spends all night doing before he does her. And she knows exactly how horribly fucking wrong any of it could go. A dark tumult of images has her grinding her teeth, her fingertips digging into the soft flesh of her arms, forehead pressing against the rough edge of the cabinet. He could be lying in some grotty hole, bleeding and broken, having to wait out the interminable day before he can go home, find help. He could be captured, like she was, being tortured in a thousand sick ways and her heart seizes and she reels with nausea as she thinks about the malicious curiosity he would rouse in a pack of vengeful and ruthless thugs and she thinks it would be better if he were dead, abrupt as a bullet to the head.

And he could be dead.

She might never know.

She mixes herself a bigger dose than usual because she cannot fucking stand any longer the frenetic pulsing of her bloodstream and the violent thoughts that tumble relentlessly through her mind; it's a big enough dose to make her puke in the grimy old toilet and she's barely able to crawl back to the mattress, each limb is so painfully heavy that it seems to take hours. She's too stoned to think anymore, and every devastating image that has racketed behind her eyes unravels abruptly and seems to scatter in wispy, intangible threads until all she sees is a blur.

By the time the day has faded, she has resolved to be furious at him. If she doesn't see him in a week, she'll leave this place, leave the city, hit the highway just like she's been tempted to every time their eyes lock and his mouth quirks in that dry, cocky way, hitch until she's beyond the reach of memory. That way if she never sees him again it's not because she doesn't know what's happened.

For the first time in a long, long time, she doesn't want to go out to work but she doesn't want to stay in that stifling little room alone with her thoughts and the lingering absence of him either. She's lacing her boots when a shadow falls over the glow of the lamp and her breath hitches but she deliberately doesn't look up. Fuck him.

"Hey." His voice is quiet, raspy. There is the soft thud of his feet hitting the floorboards and she wonders why, when she knows he could be utterly silent if he chose.

She feels so fucking stupid all of a sudden. So fucking stupid all she wants is to rail on him with her bony little fists, like it could cause him even a taste of the way she felt when she imagined him with his brains blown out.

The rage that grips her then streaks in lightning behind her eyes and she is straightening and striding across the room, fists already clenched, every thin muscle in her arms tensed and ready to let fly.

But when her eyes meet his, she pulls up short.

"What's wrong?" she asks before she even knows she will, because she has never seen a look like this in his eyes, eyes that so often blaze fierce with defiance and fury, or glitter hard with a guarded sheen, or softly shimmer with affection and desire – that are bright and deep with a thousand unexpected emotions in the quiet moments of the morning before he leaves her side, when she is curled up against him and he forgets himself – but she's never seen this look before.

He is scared.

And she knows he isn't scared that she's gonna ream him out for standing her up one night.

Raphael sits down on the window sill as though his legs just can't support him anymore, his shoulders stooped, his jaw working as he struggles to find the words and she is struck by a bolt of cold fear that makes her knees tremble. She knows. All of a sudden, she knows. There's nothing else that could hit him like this.

"Splinter's sick," he says finally, opens his mouth to say more, and can't. He lifts his eyes to hers and her heart breaks to behold them, in all their haunting, desperate fear. She steps across the rest of the way to him then and stands before him and they gaze at each other for an endless, painful moment and she has no idea what he sees on her face but his jaw tenses and he looks quickly down, his throat bobbing as he swallows hard and she thinks he might be fighting not to cry and it terrifies her.

For a moment she is lost as he sits there hunched over and staring at the floor. She hovers before him uncertainly, wondering why he is here, with her, instead of with his family, when they have all spent a lifetime learning how to care for each other, and she has nothing to offer but a bottle of cheap gin and a ratty old mattress. She realises her fists are still clenched and shame floods her cheeks with heat just as Raphael draws in a hard breath and squares his shoulders and she sees his eyes are screened with iron once more and without thinking she puts her arms around him, presses his cheek to her thin chest.

He goes rigid and she almost lets go of him, almost steps back and turns away, but then he is pulling her down onto his knee, turning his face into the bony hollow between her tiny breasts, crushing her in his arms until she feels her ribs bend. He doesn't make a sound.

She wraps her skinny arms around him as far as they will go and hugs him back, as hard as she can, the swollen tracks on her arms throbbing from the pressure, the coarse plating of his carapace scutes rough against her palms. She wishes she knew what to say.

But she doesn't, so she presses a long kiss with her chapped lips upon the dome of his skull, and he holds her tighter still and they sit in the window frame of a crumbling tenement as the moon steadily rises above them, indifferent and unrelenting, just another night on earth.


	18. Part Three: Whatever Games I Play

**PART THREE: Whatever Games I Play**

**ooo**

_Whenever I'm alone with you_  
_You make me feel like I am free again_  
_\- __**Lovesong, The Cure**_


	19. Chapter 16

Before she can talk herself out of it, she has stepped up to the payphone, lifted the receiver to her ear and dropped a quarter into the slot.

Her fingers shake as she dials the number she memorised so long ago it is an indelible note on her memory. Her arm is impossibly heavy, drooping as she fumbles at the keypad and her vision is softly glazed as though she views the city from behind murky glass. But the tones as she indents each button in turn chime with haunting familiarity. Even this stoned, her fingers find the right keys.

Behind her, Grand Central Station rushes and roars in a cacophony of sound; the stomping of thousands of feet, the whisper of countless breath mingling with the endless hum of the people who throng the concourse, the far distant rumble of trains as they rattle in and out of the station below them.

But the tumult dwindles to a murmur below the sudden ring that echoes down the line so that she hitches in a breath, her heart speeding up, gripping the receiver tightly with a raw-knuckled hand.

Amber blinks rapidly; her eyes are dry and smarting. The phone continues to ring, a hushed pulse that drowns out the world and she waits, smack-dulled and breathless.

This is a mistake. It's always a mistake.

Her grip on the receiver slackens; it slips in her hand.

"Hello, Davis residence."

And once again her hand tightens. The plastic creaks against her palm.

There is a pause, and the woman clears her throat. "Hello, anyone there?" Her Jersey accent is light but there is no joy in its timbre. She sounds only tired and old.

Amber's chapped lips have parted, but no sound is coming out. She is suddenly flushed hot then cold, pins and needles breaking out sharply across her skin. She sways where she stands, her free hand thudding abruptly up against the glass of the cubicle.

The silence stretches across the miles and over the years and still she cannot speak. When the woman speaks again, her voice is a stricken whisper:

"Alexandra?"

Amber's heart folds.

The woman continues in a rush, her worn voice frantic: "Alexandra, sweety, where are you? Are you okay? Goddamnit, tell me please, please for God's sakes…"

"I'm okay, mom." The words drag from her mouth, her voice flat and toneless. Inside her chest her heart contorts painfully. Her cheeks are wet and hot and she cannot see beyond the blur. "I'm doing fine."

The woman hasn't stopped chattering, her shaky voice jumping over the words in a breathless plea: "Alexandra, please, please sweety, come home. Please stop doing this to us. Your father – "

She hangs up.

For a moment, the world is silent but for the sharp, high echo in her ears and then, abruptly, the roar of the station rushes up all around her. She blinks and stares where her thin freckled hand, fine threads of blood tracing her knuckles, rests still on the receiver. Her eyes sting and by now her heart is an aching knot that blocks her breath, leaving her head swimming.

Dazed, she turns, reeling a little as the golden fluorescence of the concourse smarts her eyes, the ceaseless trek of travellers swarming across its tiled floors. The storm of sound is underscored by the heavy thud of her heart against her sternum and her head lolls on her neck as she gazes into the relentless chaos before her.

Her skin prickles and all of a sudden it feels as though her skull is tightening around her brain, pressing viciously down and the moan that wrenches through her teeth is raw.

She knows what she has to do. Her watery eyes skim the borders of the concourse, the sudden spike of anticipation rapidly growing in urgency so that she is panting and desperate with need and when her blurred gaze finally locates the bathrooms, she staggers determinedly into the crowd, the ruined veins that line the crook of her left arm throbbing.

She drifts the streets, her head bobbing heavy on her neck. The pavement runs wild into buildings striped green and red and blue and yellow with fluorescent light, the city a paint-pot blur daubed against the canvas of the sky. All the roar of the sleepless town is as distant as an echo, her heart beats dull and steady and the chill breeze seems to slide around her and everything is okay. Everything is just fine. She could wander all night, just like this. She could wander until the end of time.

She stands on the rooftop that overlooks the river and watches the water sparkle and shift, lights twinkling gold and silver, seeming snatched and trapped just below the glassy, undulating surface, like dreams she is content never to reach for. All the night seems poised, like a breath held, waiting for her. She doesn't care. She is free.

He finds her there, gazing out over the water, and she is so happy to see him it feels as though if it weren't caged by the fine spokes of her ribs, her heart would simply drift away. She turns her head and looks upon his broad and inhuman face with its solemn and searching expression and feels her face crease like paper folding when she smiles. She doesn't move. It is enough to look at him, enough to know he is just there, within reach.

He steps over and puts a powerful arm around her, his brow knotting. It is comfortingly heavy and she lets her weight sag against him. He is in the suit, the silver leather rough and cold against her skin.

"Fuck, you're like ice. What you doin' out here?"

"I'm not cold," she replies honestly and he frowns more.

"It's a fuckin' cold night," he says roughly. "Really stupid, gettin' so high you don't even know."

She tilts her head back a touch and regards him through her lashes, feels her lips twitch in the tiniest smile. "Okay."

Raphael looks pissed off, his eyes glittering darkly in the low light, his jaw tight. He glares at her for a long moment, but doesn't take his arm from around her. She sighs sweetly, the breath rustling through her damaged lungs, and looks back out across the river. She thinks it is strange he has no idea, no idea at all, what brought her to this point, this moment in time. She wonders what he would say if she told him, if she said she called her mother that evening.

But it doesn't matter. Nothing does.

The world drifts past, flickering like a film reel through the speckled glass visor of the helmet he makes her wear. She reminds herself to hold tight to him, like he made her promise to do, even though it feels like she could let go and nothing would happen, except she might float away. It is difficult to walk and she cannot understand why, so he carries her into the tenement that crumbles near the docks, stealing so silently up the stairs and down the hall it is as though they part time around them and vanish into its depths.

She lies back on the musty old mattress while he tugs her scuffed boots off, blissfully indifferent to his grimace and the irritated way he clicks his tongue.

"What the fuck, Lex?" he grumbles, picking up one of her skinny feet between two enormous green hands. She blinks and struggles to prop herself up on her elbows. It seems to take a lifetime.

Her feet are blistered, rubbed raw and wet where her boots have worn against them during her unending trek through the city.

"Can't feel 'em," she says to reassure him. She will later but that doesn't matter. She wants a cigarette and begins to fumble in her bag for the pack, everything feeling like cotton beneath her numbed fingers.

He shoots her a dirty look and runs his rough hands over her feet, one after the other. It would probably feel nice, if she could feel it. He eases onto his rear, grimly eyeing her, shakes his head.

"What am I gonna do with you?" he mutters darkly as the cigarette slips through her fingertips into the folds of her skirts and her hand drifts down after it.

She thinks he probably hasn't seen her this stoned before. She's always a little stoned, he might not even realise how constant and dogged her state of intoxication is, how she needs a dose just to function. But it's rare for her to be so far gone during working hours. She gets the cigarette to her lips and then begins a search for the lighter. He watches, scowling, as her fingertips float aimlessly through pockets and purses until finally their dulled tips identify the familiar shape. She can't spin the disc with enough force to get a spark and after watching her bungle three attempts, he huffs furiously.

"Here." He snatches the lighter from her hand and lights it, holding it up to the tip of her cigarette and she sucks in gratefully, letting the smoke fill her lungs, her head tipping heavily back against the wall.

"Thanks."

He grunts and chucks the lighter down on the mattress, fixes her with dark eyes that glitter angrily in the dirty light spilled by the bare lamp bulb. Usually he leaves if she's a little too high, storms off with a scowl to vent his resentment and displeasure on the streets somehow. She never lets it fuck up her buzz but sometimes she wishes he would stay all the same. This time, it seems, he will. She guesses he must be worried. That seems like him.

"How ya doin'?" she hears herself slur as he tugs the ratty old blanket up around her feet.

He shoots her another filthy glare, turns to start rummaging in the cardboard box of her clothes.

"Fine," he says shortly, tugs out a hoodie and flicks it onto her lap. "Put that on. Now."

She stares at the hoodie for a moment, then reaches for it. Her arms feel as though they are moving through water. She drags the hoodie onto her lap and slowly jabs her hand into the soft fleece, searching for the sleeve. Raphael watches her, his glower growing, fidgets and glances towards the window then back at her. Her arm slips into the sleeve and she manages to tug it up and over her shoulder. As she twists to fumble her arm into the other sleeve, the cigarette drops from her slack lips, straight into her lap where it smoulders.

"Jesus!"

Raphael leaps forward and snatches the cigarette away, grinds it between his fingertips, then bats at the smoking patch on the synthetic velvet skirt she's wearing.

"Fuck, Alex!"

He grips her by both arms, shakes her so that the world trembles thickly, his teeth bared in a grimace as his eyes bore into hers.

"What the fuck is wrong with you? This is so goddamn dangerous!"

Dimly she regards his contorted expression, the curious blend of reptile and human that composes his unique face, and considers that he would be terrifying if she wasn't so high or didn't know him so well. His eyes glitter furiously, the snarl on his face is fearsome and frightened. His powerful hands still hold her tight so when she whines and tries to pull away it is like trying to resist gravity.

"Why would you get so fucked up?" he demands as she turns her face away, grimacing and wishing suddenly he would go, leave her to float on her mattress at the cusp of oblivion. "Why do you fuckin' do this?"

It occurs to her that she could tell him. Tell him about the phone call. How her mother's voice sounded, pleading with her. If she told, he might understand.

But what difference would it make?

"'S my choice," she hears herself mumble, the words like cotton in her mouth. "Same's you."

He's been going harder out there the last couple of weeks, ever since his father collapsed. He hasn't talked about it much, but the streets have told the stories. Each tale passed in fearful, frantic whispers, echoing off street corners and down alleyways, rustling through dingy bars and shabby corner stores until it passes straight into legend.

He lets go of her in disgust and her head lolls on her neck as she weakly tugs at the hoodie where it's fallen from her shoulder. Raphael snorts, then roughly grabs hold of her wrist, yanks the hoodie open and jams her arm into the sleeve.

"You don't know what you're fuckin' talkin' about," he snaps as he zips it shut. But his bloodshot eyes and battered fists betray him all the same.

Her bleary gaze staggers over the scabbed threads that crisscross his knuckles as he sits back and she wonders if they ever ache with desire, the way her veins do.

She wonders if he wants to talk about his father. Maybe she should ask him.

She starts fumbling for another cigarette instead.

He snorts an exasperated gust of air, bounces effortlessly to his feet and strides over to the grimy electric kettle plugged into the wall. Somehow, she gets her cigarette lit while he makes her a cup of instant coffee, black and heavily sweetened from the bag of cheap white sugar, firmly resealing it when he's done. She can feel the heat of it against her palms when he presses the mug into her hands, wrapping them both firmly around it with a note of distrust in his eyes. For the first time in hours her heart skips. That flush of heat is a bad omen.

"Was it hard to keep the cockroaches away?" she asks him blearily and his glance is sharp.

"What?" he snaps.

"When you were kids?" she clarifies, takes a sip of the scalding coffee, and tries to remember how much gear she has left.

Raphael narrows his eyes at her. "What the hell you bringin' that up for? What, you wanna _chat_ now?"

She glances over at the bag of sugar, tightly folded and pinched shut with an alligator clip, but explaining seems too hard.

"You ain't capable of talkin' 'bout anythin' coherently right now." He's not waiting for an explanation anyway, yanking the blanket further up around her waist, tucking her in. "Stay the fuck in bed. I'll see ya later in the week." He plucks the cigarette from her lips and crushes it against the wall. "And don't fuckin' smoke until you straighten up."

It's not until he's moving towards the window she realises that he's leaving and she stares after him with the mug between her hands, the last gasp of nicotine trailing from between her lips. A sharp splinter of pain strikes out across her chest. If she weren't so stoned, they'd have been fighting by now, the walls rattling around them as they launched furious and brutal assaults to wreck each other's resistance. As it is, all she can do is stare after him, her lips parting with intent that dies, unrealised, on her tongue.

And then he's gone.

The window is a dark frame beyond which the night sky shimmers, the city lights reflecting dimly off the clouds and she gazes dully into it, the chipped porcelain cooling against her palms, the hoodie fleece curling softly against her skin. She licks her dry lips and swallows, takes a breath and tries to call out his name but her voice seems to fall straight into the shadows of the room. She's not even sure how much time has passed since he vanished, moonlight sliding across the glossy scutes of his carapace as he leapt away.

He's left cos he just can't stand the sight of her right now and she's no longer numb enough not to care. Maybe she should've told him after all. Maybe she should've talked to him. Maybe he needed to talk too. Maybe if she'd talked to him, he would've stayed.

The shabby little room seems cavernous then, echoing with her solitude. She fumbles for anger, for its comforting heat, but all she can find is the cold ache of longing. Scratched raw, the threads of her heart seem to peel back and suddenly she is hearing her mother's voice again, the desperate way her name trembled down the line, and she thinks she'll shoot up again now, why not after all, why not…

Abruptly, he fills the window frame, stepping back into the room with an almost sheepish set to the grim lines of his face. She blinks and stares at him, struggling to comprehend what she's seeing as he pads over the floorboards, his hands in loose fists by his sides. She tilts her head back to look up at him as he comes flush with the mattress and jerks his head sharply.

For a long moment all she can do is gaze up at him, her lashes fluttering over raw eyes, before she realises he wants her to move over and slowly she sets her coffee mug down and shuffles across the mattress, giving him room to sit down beside her.

He settles down on the mattress, shoots her a thunderous look, clears his throat.

"Figured you'd just light up again. Figured I should stay. Keep an eye on ya."

He looks awkwardly around the decrepit room, his wide mouth in a firm line, his eyes stony beneath the strip of red material tied across them. She wants to reach out and touch him, make sure he's really there, has really come back. But all she can do is stare and all she can think is that this matters, this matters so much. He glances back at her and at the sight of her face his expression abruptly cracks, something painful and worried spilling out, and he shuffles closer to her.

"Hey," he says, and his deep voice is raspy as he puts an arm around her, cups her face with his other hand, his massive thumb pressing into her cheek as he tilts her head towards him. "You okay?"

She gazes into his eyes, deep and dark in the dim light, looking upon her with concerned intent and thinks that she could tell him now. Tell him that she called her mother and her mother begged for her to come home, that her mother started to cry, that her mother doesn't know where she is and that it's been corroding her steadily all the six long years she's been gone and even still she won't tell her. She won't go back.

But if she tells him that, then he'll know she had a reason to run away. And he might start asking questions.

"Yeah," she says, and her voice is a scratchy whisper. She leans into his palm, the callouses there rough against her cheek. "Everythin's just fine."

He looks at her for a long, silent moment and she can see the flicker of uncertainty deepset in his eyes. It's strange to realise just how little he really knows about what goes on beneath the brittle shell of her skin, strange to think that whatever he suspects when it all brims up too close and threatens to bleed through it's probably far from the truth. She's lied to him so concertedly now for so long she thinks if she ever did let it spill, he'd just be pissed at the deception. Maybe he'd be right to be.

"I'm glad you came back," she tells him. It's the best she can do.

He shrugs and settles back against the wall, keeping her nestled beneath his arm and the heat of him seeps into her skin, chasing away the need so that she's content to simply be there. "Don't need ya burnin' the whole fuckin' buildin' down."


	20. Chapter 17

He leans upon the rooftop ledge and gazes down into the alley below, a crooked smile quirking his mouth, the chill of the air bitter against his cheeks.

Beneath him, the shabby little gathering parties on around drums of crackling fires, flickering shadows leaping across graffitied garage doors in shades of black and gold. A beat up old boom box has been propped on a milk crate, blasting The Ramones, and the revellers dance to chase the cold away, a motley of shapes and forms clad in layered rags and street trash couture.

In the middle of them she sways, so lithe and thin she seems more like a wisp, a shadow that darts about amidst the drums, the way her long red hair reflects the flames only heightening the impression. Beneath the suit, within his chest, his heart aches with a strange and suffocating joy to see her dance, spinning around on spindly legs, her old boots scuffing the battered pavement. He folds his arms on the stone ledge and strains to catch the thin thread of her voice singing along from where he looms over them, above the clash and clamour of _Danny Says._

The garage door of Thistleway's Outreach Centre is rolled up, a barbeque sending a delicious waft of sizzling sausages and onions up into the air, a table set up with piles of cheap white buns nearby. Hookers and the homeless cluster about, clutching styrofoam cups of tea that steam on the crisp air of the autumn night. Center staff, distinguishable from the clients only in that their clothes are slightly less shabby and much more modest, share cigarettes and chat earnestly to those who had come to the annual party, lured by the promise of free food and the raffle that could be entered for nothing more than answering a five question survey. Amber had told him the prizes – she had helped put them together. Makeup and toiletries, food coupons and condoms, and vouchers for the local Goodwill that could be exchanged for coats and boots in the appropriate size for those lucky few whose names would be drawn. The simplest necessities that, under the strain of poverty and deprivation, had become luxuries difficult to resist.

Dragging his eyes off Amber's twirling form, he surveys the familiar faces in the crowd. Sapphire is there, tall and black and gorgeous, and so is Georgie, her heavily tattooed skin gleaming by the light of the fire. They dance alongside Amber and Lucinda, whose generous cleavage is bared even in this weather. Sam, with her lined face and long grey hair, smokes and flirts jovially with the old geezers who heave laughter through toothless grins and sneakily pour cheap whiskey into their tea. The Professor is there, philosophising with a tender passion that lights his elderly face whilst Phil and Ernie gaze upon him with bleary-eyed wonder. There's runaway kids like Takeisha and Javier and Shantice, huddling together in little groups, at once posturing with bravado and warily hovering at the margins, piling paper plates high with hot dogs they devour in quick, frantic bites as though if they don't eat them fast enough, they'll be snatched out of their hands. Raphael straightens up, braces a boot against the ledge, and thinks again about clambering down, joining the party…

It's only because he was invited that he's even considering it. Amber told him it was the working girls who had first mentioned his name, the echo taken up by the kids, all of them eager and excited to have the Nightwatcher walk amongst them. For once not saving their lives or getting them out of a jam but simply – being there. Being one of them.

He is curiously touched by it. Touched to think that even though he'd barely spoken to them, had never lingered, never shown his face – he had left a mark on their lives. Something that endured, that made him mean something to them – to a world he had never expected to be part of. It didn't matter that these people themselves merely lurked at the fringes, despised and reviled. Somehow it seemed fitting his place should be amongst the misfits, if he should have a place at all. And these people belonged to the city, his city, as indelibly part of its spirit as the flash of neon and the roar of traffic.

The song dwindles, but Amber keeps spinning, coiled in trails of smoke from the cigarette that dangles from her lips. The music starts up again, this time the jaunty melody of _House of Fun_, the bold saxophone riff echoing down the alleyway. His tail stirs as he watches her, and his heart beats faster. Something immense gathers in his chest like a storm as he thinks about what it could be like, to be down there amongst them all, having a drink, having a chat, watching his girl dance…

Abruptly bitterness spikes his heart and his throat closes against the swell of heartache. He can't go down there. Not really. Not as anything other than the Nightwatcher and to do that would be to invite trouble onto these people. This vague sense of belonging he feels is an illusion. A fantasy. Something a stupid kid would dream up. He's as much an outcast as he has ever been..

More so, now. Raphael's chest tightens, the thud of his heart deepening. Truth is, he's never really belonged anywhere. Not really. He's never even really been wanted much. His eyes smart, and he tells himself it's the smoke billowing up from below, swallows hard around the lump that's constricting his throat.

It's not so hard to understand. He's so angry all the time. So combative. So violent. There's not much he can contribute either. He doesn't have the patience – or the know-how – to help people over the phone, and the thought of getting up in front of a group of strangers to make an ass of himself makes him feel vaguely queasy. And he sure as fuck wasn't a good enough ninja or student or fucking son to be sent off on some worldwide journey of self-discovery. All he knows how to do is fight and argue and beat people up. Fucking useless.

And the more time that passes with one brother gone, sending affectionate and oblivious postcards with no return address, with his father shrivelled and sick in bed, rarely conscious, with another brother vibrating with resentment and hostility and the final one determined to ignore it all, determined to ignore everything, the more he realises how useless he is.

The alley below him blurs, running together in streaks of black and red and gold and he finds himself hunched over the ledge, gripping the stone so hard it seems to bite through the thick leather, his teeth gritted and his shell heaving as he struggles to fight back against the sudden tide of agony below his plastron, his throat suffocating beneath its surge, his heart crushing until he feels it might break. He hears the snuffle of his own breath and loathing twists his gut and abruptly he straightens, dashing at his eyes, ashamed.

He looks back down into the alley, searching for her. When he finds her, she's still dancing, a cigarette dangling from her fingertips, her pale face turned up to the sky. Behind her, the technicolour faces that have been spray painted on the walls seem to come alive beneath the firelight, a strange and captivated audience that leers and glares as she spins and twists, her skinny white legs flashing beneath the flare of her ruffled skirt. He wants to go down there and be with her. Just her.

The smash and tinkle of shattering glass breaks the night and the alley is suddenly rowdy with hollering shadows. Raphael tenses, the powerful muscles of his arms tightening beneath the suit, his eyes narrowing as he surveys the uproar below him.

A gang of skinheads thunders into the alleyway, sending the vagrants and hookers into a panicked tumult as they attempt to dodge the reach of tattooed arms and the brutal beat of heavy black boots. The men, their shaved heads gleaming in the firelight, cheer and whoop as they sink fists heavy with hatred into terrified faces and smash up the tables and chairs.

In one fluid, furious move, Raphael snatches up his helmet and jams it down on his head, then leaps over the ledge, plummeting four storeys to the alley below.

He lands, absorbing the impact on all fours, gravel spraying up beneath the heel of his boots. Two of the skinheads turn to look at him. One has Shantice by the scruff of the neck, blood splattering from her nose in shining, wet trails across her black skin. He's probably mistaken the young stud for a boy, just like the cop who last fattened her lip for loitering had. She's only sixteen. Kicked out of home for telling her parents she's gay.

Raphael goes for him first.

The skinhead lets Shantice drop to the pavement and turns to the Nightwatcher with a roar and raised fists. Raphael blocks the first punch and lands a crushing blow right into the bastard's solar-plexus, feels it collapse beneath his fist like a smashed apple. The skinhead falls to his knees, gasping for breath, doubled over in agony and Raphael feels the first surge of satisfaction flood his veins.

Adrenaline spiking his bloodstream, he hears the second one coming, roaring with a baton brandished high above his head. Raphael spins to catch him directly in the gut with a powerful roundhouse that sends him flying backwards across the alley, crashing into one of the drums that spills and scatters burning embers across the ground. Some slip into the thug's shirt, shower his bald head in scalding ash and his scream rends the night as he writhes frantically, struggling to shake them off.

By now the rest of the gang has noticed, their assault on their helpless victims halting as they turn to witness the figure that stands amidst the drums, flames throwing frantic light over his armour, his face concealed behind the indifferent sheen of metal.

One of them swears, spits on the ground. The leader, his eyes flinty with hate, every visible inch of skin crowded with violent tattoos, sneers and squints against the twin beams of light that shine from the Nightwatcher's helmet.

Raphael's heart is thundering in his chest, the roar of his blood drowning out the racial epithets they start shouting at him. Beneath the helmet his jaw is tightly clenched and he surveys them all without moving his head. In his fury and his fervour they are vivid, etched against the dark alleyway in bold detail. They are no match for him. They're just cowards, going after those they know can't fight back. For weeks now, Thistleways has handed out flyers about the party along the streets. Almost everyone here is black or Hispanic. The cops wouldn't give a fuck. They must've figured it for easy pickings.

Raphael feels the edge of his mouth curve upwards in anticipation as he glares at the fuckers, his fists tightening.

They come for him all at once, three of them. One swings a chain above his head, the clink of steel whipping the air, and Raphael catches it in a fist, the thick leather shielding his hand as the chain wraps around it. He yanks the thug off his feet then uses his body as a shield against the crack of the baton the leader wields. A raised forearm blocks the knife strike from the third, the shining blade scratching harmlessly across the gauntlet.

The heave of breath and the tang of sweat intoxicates him and his heartbeat rises. Raphael unwraps his hand, shoves the thug back into the leader, breaks the knife-wielder's arm with a crack that sends a shudder of satisfaction echoing right down to his bones. The leader staggers, but doesn't go down, pushing his lackey away from him with a hateful grimace that distorts his face.

He comes forward again, swinging his baton with savage intent and Raphael ducks at the same instant the lackey regains his footing and launches towards him, whipping his chain once more. Raphael barrels into him as he pivots, wrapping his massive arms around his waist, the armoured shell he wears rendering the lash of the chain pitifully ineffectual, driving them both out of the way of the leader's blows. He's gotta take this guy out. Now. He shoves the lackey away from him then catches the hand that wields the chain and twists it, prompting a yelp of pain that has him hissing in a breath of exhilaration between his teeth. The thug falls to his knees and a moment later a powerful punch breaks his jaw as though it were glass, the dislocated bone hanging at a sickening angle.

The next instant his head rings as the leader's baton connects brutally with the helmet. The thick metal protects his skull, but he's still thrown off-balance, staggers, drops into a sweeping kick just as the leader swings again, the baton ripping through air. Raphael's leg knocks the leader off his feet, and he's thrumming with savage delight to see the fucker's head bounce off the pavement. He's on him in a heartbeat, hauling him to his feet and slamming his guts with a massive fist. The man is dazed, grunts at the impact, and Raphael gives him another one for good measure, the resisting muscle snapping beneath his blow like an elastic band. The guy's strong, but still he doubles over, hoicking up bile as he gags and sputters in pain.

Raphael grasps him viciously by the throat, forces him to stand upright so he can look him in the eye. The fucker claws uselessly at the thick gloved hand that grips him, incapable of doing much else. His lined skin is steadily turning purple as he struggles and chokes, and his grey eyes are steely with malice even though he knows he's licked. Raphael knows all he can see is the reflection of his own evil face in the mirrored visor of the helmet and wonders if the bastard realises now what he is, now he has to look at it.

A second later, the guy bares his teeth and spits savagely at him, a gob of saliva spattering the visor.

Inside the helmet, Raphael blinks and stares at the clenched, yellowed teeth as the skinhead sneers at him. Why the fuck not, he thinks.

And then he rounds back and punches the guy straight in the mouth, his teeth shattering beneath the impact, shards of enamel flying as his head snaps back and then his body sags limply in Raphael's grip. Knock out.

He lets the unconscious body slump to the ground like a sack of wet cement, opens and shuts his fist, breathing deeply as the surge of elation he had felt slowly starts to ebb, leaving him buzzing and grimly satisfied.

Around him there is silence but for the crackle of fire. The boombox lies, smashed on the ground amidst scattered sausages and rolls. As Raphael's pulse slowly steadies and his muscles uncoil, he becomes aware of the people who hover beyond the flickering light the drum fires throw, those who weren't able to run once the attack began. Those who gaze upon him now, wide-eyed and silent.

Abruptly, a cheer goes up and they surge towards him, a cluster of smiling faces, smooth skinned and crumpled like paper, toothy grins and toothless, a mob of homeless vagrants and runaway kids, hookers and drug addicts, all of them clamouring to be close to him, patting his shoulders and the metallic dome over his shell. Raphael reels, head whipping from one to the other, uneasy to be so close to so many people, every instinct he's got urging him to get away, get some distance. Sapphire has her arms around him and is pressing lipsticked lips again and again to the scratched surface of the helmet. Shantice is crying, wiping away blood and tears with the back of a wrist, punching his arm with delight. Ernie and Phil are offering cigarettes, trying to push a flask into his hand.

"It – it's nothin'," he hears himself say, his voice a low rasp as he struggles to deal with it all, with the hot press of bodies against him, the cacophony of voices too close, the faces that blur and clash as they paw him. "Ain't nothin' – "

With a sickening lurch he realises Amber isn't there, that her pointed little face and wry expression cannot be found amongst the crowd. His head whips around, searching desperately over their heads, his heart suddenly a frantic drumbeat in his chest, desperate to push beyond the circle that traps him, find her…

… Suddenly he sees her, hovering near the end of the alleyway, in the shadows. She's smoking, cool and calm and untouched, as far as he can see. She watches the little scene, one arm crossed over her breasts, her hip jutting out. Her eyes lock on his, even through the mirrored surface of the visor, staring straight into him. A shiver runs through him as he recognises the look in her eye and his tail abruptly stiffens, the people around him fading into the background as her ice blue eyes stare hungry into his.

And then she turns and struts away, rounding the corner and vanishing, a breeze skimming up the hem of her skirt as she goes.

Raphael's heart continues to pound, but now with a new urgency and he begins to push through the people, gently as he can, quickly as he can.

"I gotta go," he's vaguely aware of saying as they reluctantly part for him, still excitedly chattering away. "It's nothin' – happy to help. Get someplace safe, okay…"

They let him go, standing back to watch as he darts into the shadows.

"Thank you, Nightwatcher!" Sapphire hollers one final time as he disappears, but he scarcely hears her.

His bloodstream is singing again, pounding hotly through his veins as he goes after her. He'd dropped her off earlier, where he'd parked the bike in a tiny little nook crammed between tenements. His boots crunch gravel underfoot as he strides down the crooked little laneway, pitch black and disturbingly silent.

He comes to a halt, the scratch of his tread echoing off the bricks. The shadows are thick and cold, but the bright point of her cigarette gleams orange in their depths and he can hear the crackle of the tobacco as she inhales.

He reaches up and flicks on the flashlights attached to either side of his helmet.

She's there, sitting side-saddle on his bike, her eyes pressed shut and her head tilted back against the abrupt glare, her long red hair gleaming. He stares at her, his plastron rising and falling, his tail throbbing. Slowly, she opens her eyes and lowers her head, staring at him through a squinted gaze, her irises glacier-clear in the spotlight, her pallor wan and dry. Her legs are spread, one heel propped up on the exhaust, her skirt dipping between her thighs, shadowing what lies beneath.

She flicks her cigarette to the ground and licks her lips.

In three strides he is there, grasping her by the hips and yanking her against him as his tail fights the confines of the suit, his erection pressing at the lips of his cloaca, urgent with need. Amber gasps and arches her back, gripping the seat with both hands. She grinds her crotch against him, expertly rubbing herself on the bone of his plastron where it is outlined beneath the leather. His hands are all over her, one thrusting her tee shirt up, exposing a tiny breast he squeezes with the other, the nipple puckering hard. Inside the helmet, his breath is harsh and ragged as her hands fumble with the zip at his throat, tugging it down, exposing the pale scutes of his natural armour below. She yanks it down, all the way down, to where it disappears between his thighs, and his tail drops in relief, his cock sliding quickly out. She drags her ragged nails across his plastron, eliciting a shudder from him that makes his throat go dry, wraps her arms around him and bites him hard on the exposed sliver of skin at his shoulder.

Desire surges furiously in him and quickly he pulls back, flips her around, bending her over the bike. Her breath is ragged pants as he kicks her legs apart and pushes her skirt up around her hips, her scrawny ass bare and pale beneath the glaring light and he watches his own gloved hand slide down between the crevice of her buttocks, slipping between the folds of her cunt, relishing the little grunt she makes, how she pushes back against him. He wishes he could feel the heat and wet of her against his bare palm, wishes he could smell her too cos that always makes it better for him.

But his cock is nudging urgently against her cold thigh and quickly he cups the back of it and pushes her knee up onto the seat. She whimpers as he thrusts quick and hard inside her, her body spreading suddenly tight and hot around every aching inch of him. He grasps hold of her hips and begins to fuck her in earnest, the snug sheath of her sending a wave of euphoria washing up through his body. Amber grasps the bike seat, bites her lip, and thrusts back against him feverishly. In the cold silence of the alleyway, their breathless gasps echo off brick walls and the rhythmic slap of his hips against her ass is loud and shocking.

He fucks her hard, her cunt yanking back on him with every pull, and his whole being thrums with fervour, his veins still echoing with the earlier exultation of the fight, her ready desire triggering another rush of adrenaline that prompts his fingertips to bite hard into her bony hips, urges him to pound her fast and brutal, driving straight into her unresisting body with savage force.

Amber is clinging to the seat, her knuckles white and threaded with blood in the jerking light from his spotlights. In the frigid night, he can see the sheen of perspiration on the white planes of her ass. His tail stiffens so that it curves up between her legs and then he can feel the prehensile tip of it kneading and rubbing into the sensitive tissue of her pussy. She slams one skinny fist against the seat, lifts her leg higher and, somehow, he plunges even deeper inside her.

It's mind blowing. His eyes roll back in his head, the buried shaft of his cock throbbing with bliss and he can already feel the mounting pressure deep in his groin. Fuck. He can't stop, she feels too fucking good and the whole thing is too fucking hot, fucking her in some alley over his bike, right after beating the ever-loving daylights out of some scumbags.

He feels Amber tighten around him, the tell-tale clench he has learned means that she's right at the brink. He flexes his tail, feeling it swipe across her clit. She sucks in a hard breath, her pale, freckled face contorted with ecstasy, her icy eyes wild with desire when the bobbing light flashes over them. He slams into her, fast, frantic and she arches, her head tipping back, her cunt gripping him tightly. The rapid crescendo of his euphoria breaks in a furious deluge that crashes through his body just as she whimpers softly and shudders below him, her pussy clamping rapidly around his cock. He blows deep inside her, the padded confines of the helmet echoing with his churrs as he mindlessly pumps her, lost on the tide of ecstasy.

They stay joined together for a breathless eternity, and his heart seems as though it will never slow. Then she stirs, and he sees that she is trembling and realises it is from the cold. Shakily, he pulls out of her and she hitches in a breath, bites her lip again. His cock has started to soften, retreat back into his tail and he reaches down and tugs the zip back up, suddenly aware of the cold air biting into his plastron.

Amber turns slowly around, pushing her hair back over one ear, tugging her skirt down with one hand. She wiggles up onto the bike seat and looks at him from eyes bleary and satisfied. There, in the stark beam of his headlights, her pale, heavily freckled face seems suddenly luminous. Her chapped lips are painfully raw, the shadows beneath her eyes only making them seem huger, more engrossing. Then she reaches up and cups the helmet in either hand, struggling to push it off of him. He helps her, and the night air is freezing against the sweaty skin of his face.

Something tender flickers in her eyes, her expression softening as he tucks the helmet under one arm, his perspiration quickly drying in the cold. She takes his face in her cold, rough hands and her red lashes flutter against the sunken hollows of her cheeks as she leans over and kisses him.

Her lips are cold and dry but the depths of her mouth are liquid fire as his tongue slides across hers, as he tugs her close against him with his free arm, as his head tilts. His heartbeat finally slows as her arms slide up and over his shoulders, as the kiss deepens, his mouth closing hotly over hers.

When the kiss ebbs they stay close, breath mingling. "You are so fuckin' hot," she whispers against his mouth in the darkness. Blood floods his cheeks and deep in his chest, his heart lightens.

Later, they gaze out over the river from their rooftop, sipping scalding gin from the bottle, nestled under an old blanket she rummaged from a Goodwill bin one night.

"Me 'n Don keep fightin'," he says abruptly, without even knowing he will.

She glances sideways at him, and he can feel the weight of her stare as the distant boats glimmer on the water, sliding across its shifting surface, dark shadows but for their headlights. She takes a puff on her cigarette and tilts her head.

"What about?" she asks him.

He rubs his face with one calloused palm, runs it back over his skull. "Nothin'. Everythin'. He says I ain't doin' anythin' to help out. Ain't pullin' my weight." His heart has started knocking against his plastron and he sets his jaw as he watches tiny lights flicker and bob over the water. "Maybe he's right. But he ain't doin' much either." Even as he says it, he knows it's a lie and his throat starts to close up. Donatello is working fulltime and caring for Splinter simultaneously. "I mean – I know he's gotta take care of Splinter, but he slacked off on trainin' for weeks before that. Barely showin', never mind leadin'. It's like he jumped on this as the best excuse to get outta it – and that makes me sick," he finishes bitterly, slumping forward with his elbows on his knees, hands dangling between his legs.

Next to him Amber is quiet for a moment but he can feel her watching him, feel the gentle weight of her gaze.

"I wanna work!" he bursts out roughly, his teeth clenching together. "But I don't know what the hell I can even do. All I know is how to fix stuff, or build it – how in the hell am I s'posed to get a job like the Genius or fuckin' Mr Show Off? Y'know, if they'd just left me in charge – I coulda – I woulda done a good job." There's a harsh wistfulness to his voice and his heart thuds painfully as hurt and disappointment wells inside of him. They didn't trust him. They didn't believe in him.

Beside him, she leans forward and brushes her knuckles tenderly against his cheek. He flinches a little. "I know you woulda," she says softly. "And you're doin' a lot."

"I take money," he confesses. She's not gonna care. She'd do the same. "From the heavy hitters. After I'm done with 'em. Gotta sneak it into the kitty. In little bits, so Don don't notice." A spike of self-loathing makes him faintly nauseous. Doesn't matter that they're all drug lords and mobsters. Doesn't matter it'd feel worse not to be contributing at all. Doesn't matter they fuckin' need it.

"It'd just end up in an evidence locker," she says bluntly. "Or pocketed by crooked cops. You're helpin' your family. Even if they don't know it."

For a long moment he is silent, cracking his knuckles against the other, rubbing his palms together. It's what he keeps telling himself too. It doesn't help.

He looks up and over the river again, a hollow ache engulfing his chest. "No point even tryin' to pull shit together now," he mutters. "No one'll listen to me. I'm just the fuck-up."

She sits forward, an icy hand sliding over his, squeezing tight. "That's bullshit," she says urgently. She hesitates a moment, then drags his hand up to her lips, kisses his scarred knuckles. "You – make a difference. A big one."

He tugs his hand away, his shoulders heaving with consternation. A terrible pressure begins to gather deep inside him, storming to suffocate his heart, his throat. His gut churns with guilt, sickening and sour.

"Splinter – " his plastron heaves as he struggles to breathe. He has carried this burden for weeks now, like a weight at the base of his spine, dragging him down into a mire of disgust and loathing. "Him bein' so sick – I - I pushed him. Yelled at him for givin' up on us. I didn't think. He'd been actin' off for weeks. But I didn't think. After I lost it, he – he started tryin' again, to lead trainin'. Gettin' up early, workin' us hard. Workin' himself too hard..."

He falls silent, breathing harsh, his heart a sharp knot of pain that twists into his veins. Around him the city continues to hum, dark and glittering and cold. He stares out across it where it stretches to the river and imagines evaporating into the dark shadows that splay the terrain, being engulfed whole in the icy black depths of the city until he is nothing, until this pain is nothing.

Amber's hand is on his shoulder, her touch cold and soft.

"It's not your fault," she says quietly and he feels his face contort, shrugs her hand off.

"Shuttup," he growls.

"But it isn't," she insists and then she is sitting forward, dropping her feet to the rooftop, resting her elbows across her knees, echoing his posture. She doesn't reach for him again, but presses against him, her thin body a gentle pressure against his side. "Rats are… really susceptible to pneumonia. Once it's in… it's in. Even if all he'd done was lay in bed… without treatment it still woulda got so bad."

He feels very still. The wind lashes softly against his cheeks, over his mouth, scuttling beneath the rim of his carapace so that his flesh prickles. Beside him she is lighting another cigarette, the snap of the lighter crisp in the night.

He thinks about his father, so thin and shrivelled, the raspy, strained breathing and the rusty blotches around his eyes and nose like blood stains. The fur he had always kept so meticulously groomed all bristled and dry. The once agile and proud sensei now unable even to get out of bed, passing his days in and out of consciousness, a terrible rattling cough echoing down the hallways and sending a shudder down his spine. And all he can do is leave, get out, get away. Something inside him is crumpling, collapsing into itself, like he's tearing endlessly inwards. His eyes prickle and he cannot breathe.

"It's not your fault," she murmurs again and her breath is warm against him. He is strung so tight his muscles quiver and the lump in his throat goes down hard. Then her arms creep around him. For a moment he wants to push her away.

But the press of her against him, her thin arms encircling his shoulders as tight and close as she can, the familiar odours of shampoo and tobacco and her own raw scent overwhelms him so that he is suddenly folding into her, gulping in air as he buries his face in her hair. For a breath, a heartbeat, he remembers being a child held by his father when all the world seemed too enormous to bear. Then all the world is her and the soft press of her against him and somehow, he belongs.


	21. Chapter 18

"Here. Take this."

She looks down at the object he's tossed onto the mattress, raises a brow to see it's an oval device in a battered black casing. It looks vaguely familiar, but she's not sure how.

"One'a Don's earlier prototypes, but it works just fine." Raphael lets a charger cord slither onto the sheet beside the device, cracks his neck and turns around. "My number's in there. It ain't hard to use."

It's a fucking cellphone. Of course it is. He just won't let up about it. Amber rolls her eyes and puts her brush down, tossing her hair back over her shoulder as she reaches for the phone. Beyond the window the sky is still streaked violet at the horizon, twilight slowly succumbing beneath the press of night. She was just getting ready for work when he dropped by, slipping in through her window all dark muscle and fluid as a shadow. He's started doing that more often – coming by early in the evening for a kiss, a quiet word or two, rarely lingering beyond the time it takes to quickly embrace. They've learned it's too easy to distract each other in the keen press of their bodies, tumbling into the other's gaze so that time stops, all of the world easing to a standstill around them until abruptly they look up and somehow it is dawn. She doesn't want to admit it, but these stolen moments at dusk seem to warm her blood, fill her veins with a fervour that spreads golden as light, making the long night ahead of her not so long, not so dull as it might've been. Not when she can still feel the coarse brush of his knuckles against her paper thin cheek, or wet her lips and taste him there.

The plastic is cold against her hand as she picks up the phone and turns it over. Her searching fingers find an indented button and she presses it. Immediately, the casing snaps open, revealing the phone within, the LCD screen glowing brightly in the gloaming of her little room.

Raphael drops to the mattress beside her, his arm hard against her own thin one, the dim heat of his body causing her to lean against him without even realising it. He reaches over and with his massive hand, plucks the phone from her grip and begins to cycle through the functions.

"Here… this is how ya call… text messages in here… you can use the internet if ya want… I dunno what Don did, but he says it's a smart phone, whatever the hell that means." It is not as strange as it might've seemed, once, that he is more in touch with technology than she is. Most of the time he seems more in touch with humanity than she is. "Meant to be the best kind. Camera's here. "

"Camera?" She takes the phone back from him and awkwardly punches at the screen with a finger. It changes, giving way to a dark window that flickers as the phone moves and she realises it's the room beyond being reflected there. Raphael leans over and his breath grazes her neck, punches a button with a thick finger and the phone makes the sound of a camera shutter, a reel of film spooling to the next cell. The image displayed is pixelated, nothing but grainy shadow upon shadow, the pocked and weathered floorboards beyond the mattress. She snorts and he chuckles, presses another button to delete the image.

She lifts the phone up, scans it across the room, watching the screen as the graffitied walls race dimly across it. Abruptly she turns to Raphael and presses the button. The artificial click echoes off the walls.

"What? No!" Too late he turns away, huge hand lifted to shield his face. "I fuckin' hate my picture being taken, Lex." He's a little irritated, but not too much.

"Sorry," she says, because she hates her picture being taken too. She looks at the phone in her hand and her heart tugs to see the image she captured, his painfully expressive face caught in an unguarded moment. He had been watching her play with the phone, and there's the tiniest smile at the corners of his wide mouth, his deep green eyes soft beneath the brow that cannot seem to help but furrow always, just a touch. Her heart is unravelling, as though that tug was a hook that pierced and pulled at the aching muscle, peeling off bleeding layers of tissue that spool down into her gut. She moves her finger over the button below the trash bin icon at the bottom of the screen, hesitates.

"I deleted it," she says, and snaps the phone shut, tosses it onto the mattress. Her eyes lift to meet his, and his brow is a little heavier now, no remnants of that funny little smile left on the stern line of his mouth. "Thanks, I guess."

He cocks his head, narrows his eyes at her. "Just fuckin' use it, all right?"

She glares at him, picks up her pack of cigarettes. "Fine. Jesus."

For a moment there is silence but for the snap of her lighter, the crackle of tobacco. They sit side by side on the lumpy old mattress, not looking at each other as she smokes and he stares out the window. Finally, she scratches her ear and ashes her cigarette.

"How's Splinter?"

He stiffens at her words, shell rising as his shoulders hunch over. "The same," he mutters shortly. He bounces easily to his feet, strides towards the window, a rippling shadow against the dim sky beyond. Suddenly, she doesn't want to see him go.

"Is this thing trackable?" she picks up the phone again, cigarette dangling between chapped lips.

He leans a hand on the window frame and turns to look back at her. She cannot see his face. "It hacks into a network, but like… it's masked or somethin'. I dunno exactly. It shouldn't be traceable by any corps though."

She sucks on the cigarette, lifts her brows at him. "What about individuals? Am I now a blinky dot on one of Donatello's computer screens fifty feet below?" She puffs out a stream of smoke.

For a moment he doesn't answer, still and silent in the darkness. She drops the phone again.

"Hmm."

"No one's gonna be keepin' an eye on ya!" he explodes, moving away from the window, back into the room. "But if there's some kinda emergency – like there has been before – " he points out with dangerous emphasis. " – then yeah, I can find ya. What's so fuckin' bad about that?"

She plucks her cigarette from her mouth, exhales. "There's a reason I live the way I do, you know."

"What is it?" he snaps, flinging his muscled arms to the side.

She blinks up at him, startled. "What?" A prickle skims her skin and her gut abruptly shrinks.

"What's the reason?" Raphael demands, standing before her with his hands in loose fists, his eyes blazing bright in the dim light of the room. "I mean, you don't gotta live like this. You make enough to get a proper place. Fit it up. Buy new clothes. Get a phone of your own. So how come you don't?"

She stares at him, for a moment taken too off guard to retort. Then she tosses her head, takes a drawl on her smoke and sneers at him. "I don't want any of that stuff," she snaps finally.

"Why not?" he pushes, still looming over her. "You ain't safe here. And what if the cops turn this place over? Not to mention it's fuckin' freezing. Why would you live like this if you don't gotta? Hell, not even we live like this and we live in the fuckin' sewer! What're you hidin' from?"

"Nothin'!" she spits at him, her teeth bared, brows knitting tight. Her chest rises and falls like the frantic beat of a bird's breast and she feels wild suddenly, like she might bite him if he touches her. "I'm not hidin' from anything! This suits me, it does me just fine. What's it to you anyway?"

Before the words have even left her lips she knows it's a stupid question. They are wrapped up now in the aching pulses of each other's lives, as closely and intimately as the soft press of flesh against flesh that tracks a heartbeat. The scornful glimmer in his eye is all the answer he gives her as he turns and paces the room, kicking at the dust with one huge two-toed foot.

She smokes quickly and there's a tremble to her fingers that makes the smoke skitter on the chill air that's leaking in through the window, stiffening the room. She thinks about the Hello Kitty lunchbox, already tucked into her backpack, absently scratches the tender underside of her arm, one ragged fingernail catching a scab and setting off a sharp spark of pain. She doesn't need to. She fixed when she woke up, enough to get her through a few hours yet. She doesn't need to.

She doesn't need to, but she wants to. Greed is a blooming mushroom in her gut that swells upwards and sickens her blood, leaves a taste in her mouth that is putrid as bile.

Raphael drops down onto the mattress beside her, staring at her with eyes that are dark as the river below the heavy knot of his brow.

"Talk to me," he urges her roughly and she grinds the butt of her cigarette out with her thumb, straight into the rotting floor, laughs in a short and desperate way.

"And say what?" she says, but she's just stalling for time. "We already been through all this. There's no deep, dark mystery. No tragic secret that brought me here." She dares to look at him with rancour brittle in her eye. "It's fuckin' insulting you still think there's gotta be." She can turn this into a fight if she has to; confuse him with theory and rhetoric and ideals long enough that her heart might stop thundering against her ribs, that the steady strum of accumulating panic stills.

"There's gotta be a reason," he says stubbornly, eyeing her with the sheen of suspicion in his eyes. "It don't make any sense."

Her heart is a blur inside her chest and she struggles to catch her breath, and now she is picking at the scabs in the crook of her elbow, worrying the rough edges away from the new flesh beneath. Why does he want this so much – why can't he just be happy to spill his guts and let her stay stitched up? She sucks in a breath and makes a choice.

"I don't want my family to find me," she says, her head bowed and her shoulders hunched up, peeling a blackened crust away from her skin, blood trickling from the wound. It's true, but only part of it. She embellishes with a lie that is easy to believe, one she has told before, over and over: "I – don't want to hurt them anymore than I already have."

She swallows hard, smudges the blood away from her arm with a thumb. He is silent for a long moment, and then he sighs and reaches up to tighten the knot that binds his mask. Her gut twisting, she hopes it was enough.

"Shit, Lex, I can understand that," he says heavily, and her shoulders sink in relief, her eyes pressing shut. Then she reaches for her cigarettes.

Beside her he shifts a little, and she senses his hesitance. Then his rough palm is on her shoulder and he is tugging her towards him. A pang strikes her chest and she leans stiffly against him, fighting the urge to pull away. She's told him nothing, nothing at all, but he thinks it's something and somehow even giving him that illusion feels dangerous. Like it's just the start.

Like that single small truth is the first crack that could spread until the whole of her shatters.

Like she just made a terrible mistake.

"I'm just a coward," she says abruptly, sitting up and offering him a lopsided smile. "Don't wanna see the harm I done, that's all. Just selfish, Raph. That's all."

And there's the second truth and her blood runs frigid as her throat clamps painfully shut and she clenches her teeth too late. Because when she ran away, she left others behind and she knew – knew what she was leaving them to. And she knows now, for sure, that even the smallest concession can quickly lead to another.

Her heart knots up and her chin is trembling and she looks quickly away but not before he sees. His expression creases with concern and he is there, pulling her against him. She is a coiled mess of tension as she resists the impulse to scream and twist away, to hit him until he leaves her alone, until he understands he will never know, that he has no right to know. His arms are huge and strong around her and so she just turns her face into his neck and grits her jaw, her eyes squeezed shut, holding her breath until the swell of her emotion retreats, dwindles down into the depths of her. She feels herself ease in his arms and takes a shaky breath.

He'll be happy now, surely. Now that she's told him something and nearly cried.

One of his great hands lifts to trail gently through her hair. She can feel how the strands catch against the callouses on the pads of his fingers. His neck is dry and cool and the scent of him is too familiar, too soothing. She makes another terrible mistake and lifts her head to look at him.

Their eyes lock. For a moment they are staring into each other so deeply she thinks they will be lost there, lost together in that space between them. She cannot look away from him, cannot even close her eyes and save herself. All she can see is that he loves her and it makes her ache with a strange, quiet sorrow. No one has loved her in a very long time.

She wonders if it hurts him to love her. It hurts her to love him the way she does, as though she is pulling a muscle that has become limp through neglect, leaving her lame and breathless with the agony of it.

Her throat tightens, her heart pattering so quick the sight of him swims before her eyes. For a moment she thinks she could tell him one more truth - that she lives like this because then she seems barely a person at all, beyond the confines of her body and the memories it bears - that with nothing to ground her or tie her down it is easier to drift apart from the burden that staggers her tread, that is etched into her bones and twists in the threads of her muscle. That this way she seems more a shadow of herself, slipping between the unbearably bright glares of existence, without history and therefore without its awful legacy.

But how could he hear that and not ask her why?

No matter what, the truth always leads back into the past.

Raphael swallows hard, rough fingertips pushing strands of hair back over her ear, the softness of his touch tempting her to let the tension ebb from her body. "Y'know," he says quietly. "If you think they'd come lookin' – maybe they don't care much 'bout the other stuff."

Her blood spikes with a gust of adrenalin, skimming off her heart in painful waves and she pulls away from him, fumbling for a cigarette. Her eye falls once more on her backpack, her thoughts lingering over the gleam of steel hair-thin and dripping and her throat scorches as though it is just water she craves. It must seem so obvious to him, given all the claims she has made of a loving and devoted family whose heart she broke - whose anguish she is cruelly prolonging. She has never cared about being thought of as cruel before. She doesn't want to care now.

She picks up the phone again and snaps it open. "I never had a cell phone before," she says and he looks away, scratches his neck.

"You grew up in this posh family and never had a cell?" He sounds dubious and her heart skitters again, her gut sliding queasily.

"They promised me one," she says, staring down at the glowing screen. "If I stopped usin' - that's what made me decide to run away." She laughs hollowly, doesn't look at him. "Toldja I was just a spoiled brat. You see why I can't face them?" The lie has made her feel better, but she doesn't want to see how he might be looking at her. "They're better off without me."

She snaps the phone shut again, abruptly fearful of what he might see on her face in the stark light of the screen. Her heart is a sharp ache in her chest that relentlessly throbs and she crosses her ankles over and hugs her knees, gazing towards the window and the cold night beyond. She doesn't want to go out to work tonight. The thought of it - of the clamour and the drang of the chaotic streets, the bitter wind that will pierce down to her bones, of the taunts and sneers and the endless hours waiting, the horrible monotony of smiling and coaxing and fucking whilst all the while the vague dread of memory dogs her hide - is enough to make her gut turn.

She swells suddenly with the urge to scream at him, to turn on him as savage as the roaring night and drive him away. She did not want to remember, tonight. She did not want to feel this way.

But she doesn't want him to go, either. The only other comfort she has is the dull hollow of a spoon. Usually, it's enough. Enough to smear away the savage blot of remembrance, enough to carry her onto the streets and through the unending night. And usually that's what she wants.

But she tingles still from the warmth of his arms and the nearness of him is like a lure that seems to slip between the fine weave of her flesh and tug. She want to turn to him, but she is fearful of what she might find. How long will he believe her? How long will it be until he knows her too well?

Will he still love her if he starts to guess how much she lies to him?

He snorts abruptly, breaking the silence between them. "Ah, ya don't need some rich family to get you fancy shit anyway." He reaches over and taps the black phone in her hand with one thick finger. "I got ya sorted, didn't I? Anythin' ya need, I can hook you up. No sweat."

She finally lifts her eyes to find him grinning at her, his eyes glittering playfully. She feels her own face crease in a smile, tilts her head.

"You can, huh?"

He chuffs and shrugs lightly, still smirking. "Shit, yeah. Just say the word. Anythin' for my girl."

His braggadocio is wry, he wants to make her smile and forget and it strikes a pang out across her chest at the sweetness of it. She looks at him where he sits in all his deliberately exaggerated machismo, shell up against the graffiti, knees bent and splayed, chin tilted up with that sardonic smirk curving his wide mouth, and realises he wants to believe her. He hasn't started doubting her yet because he wants to believe she will meet his reluctant vulnerability with her own. That she will play fair, as fair as he does.

Goddamn it.

She laughs, running her hands up over her face and back through her hair. "I ain't in the mood to work," she admits.

He sniffs and rubs his snout with the back of a wrist, grimaces. "I ain't in the mood, either." He glances at her again, and she knows that she cannot bear to be without him tonight.

And she reaches for him, curls her cracked knuckles against the broad plane of his cheek. "Let's get a room and - " her breath hitches as she stumbles over the words. " - fuck all night." Too late she thinks she could've said made love after all, could've given him that after all she's denied. Old habits die hard.

He's smiling at her, his eyes dark and deep. "Best goddamn idea I've heard all week." Then abruptly he frowns, his brow ridges furrowing. "I'm payin' this time."

"C'mon," she tsks, turns onto her knees and shoves a grimy pink jumper into her backpack. "You need that money for your family."

"I ain't a mooch," he insists stubbornly, getting to his feet and adjusting his weapons. "Don't fuckin' argue."

She remembers that the macho shit isn't always an act, and her mouth quirks in a smile she hides behind a curtain of hair as she bends over to lift her backpack. And she thinks that maybe he wants to feel like he can look after her, like he really can match up to his playful boasts somehow. She knows he would, with everything he's got, if she would only let him.

"Fine," she says with just enough edge that it doesn't seem she's giving in too easy. She turns the phone over in her hands, then jams it into the pocket of her hoodie and turns to him. He's there, all muscle and plated armour and those dark eyes that make her shiver and suddenly her heart lifts. He reaches out and rubs her arms, the soft fleece of the hoodie brushing her skin so that she tingles, the strength of him palpable even in that light touch, a little smile touching the corners of his mouth. Suddenly she is excited and breathless, longing for him between her thighs, pressing down hard upon her and into her. He must see the sudden flush of her desire in her lidded eyes, her parted lips, because something shifts across his face and he leans forward and kisses her.

His mouth is warm and firm, sending a flood of sensation running straight down through her like a shot of liquid fire so that her knees buckle and her head swims.

All at once there is nothing but the thrill of the night before her, in his arms.


	22. Chapter 19

Raphael's phone vibrates against his plastron, a rumble that seems to echo off the lining of his shell, abrupt and startling him from his reverie.

He reaches into the pocket of his hoodie and pulls it out, flips up the casing to see who it is.

There, illuminated on the screen like a recrimination: Casey.

Raphael hesitates, his thumb hovering over the 'answer' key. Then he snaps the casing shut and jams the phone back into his pocket.

He folds his arms over the handlebars of the bike he straddles and leans forward, peering through the tinted visor to where Thistleways squats, crumbling and grim, on a gloomy street in the Bronx's Southwest.

It's weird to be out on the street so early, when the sky is still violet and the sun not yet fully swallowed by the horizon. Even in the sweatsuit and big boots he wears, with the ordinary old bike helmet covering his face, he feels conspicuous and glances edgily around him. There's not many on the streets - a few weary faces trudging home from a day of work, a few bleary ones just on their way to start one. No one pays him any mind. Between long shadows of soft grey, the dying rays of the sun spill bright streaks of gold across shabby brick facades and cracked pavement. Raphael looks up and down the wide street, watching the cars drive on by. It's funny to think that this city is his home, that it's always been his home and yet he's seen it by the light of day more often in the movies.

In his pocket, his phone starts ringing again.

Across the road, the big old door of Thistleways opens and she steps out onto the stoop, in jeans for once, nudging enormous dark sunglasses up her nose, her hair in a messy knot on the back of her head. Beneath the helmet, Raphael's mouth tugs in a smile and he starts the bike then turns it in a wide and illegal arc over the laneways to pull to a rumbling stop by the curb.

She pulls up short, unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, the tilt of her head wary. She hasn't seen this bike before. Hasn't seen him dressed like this.

A moment later, she grins and tucks the cigarette back into the pack.

She takes the helmet he proffers and then swings onto the bike behind him. It hardly rocks beneath her scant weight and he waits until he feels her hands hook over the rim of his shell beneath his hoodie before he tears away into the streets.

New York City at dusk seems softer somehow, less grimy, the lights not so bright against a dim and still dwindling sky, the city seeming to be gathering its energy yet so that the evening is poised with immense possibility. With the bite of the autumn wind piercing through his sweats and her grip tight on his shell, he is suddenly exhilarated and thinks he could ride forever like this, through his city at endless twilight and her body curving the dome of his carapace. They roar through the streets of the Bronx, weaving in and out of traffic all the way to Whitestone Bridge. The East River glitters in either direction beneath them as the last rays of the sun fade below the distant points of Manhattan's skyscrapers.

The residential streets of Queens echo with the rumble of his engine as he hurtles through them, the trees that line either side stretching to meet above their heads in a canopy of branches bare and stark against the darkening sky. He fixes his attention on the road, not even glancing at the double-storey houses with their impossible front lawns, taking corners at wild angles until he is back in the more familiar depths of Ridgewood, the houses clustered close together with steps that clatter straight onto the pavement. They head towards the Brooklyn Bridge with the bike thrumming below them, overtaking every vehicle that gets in their way and there is nothing he knows but the road before them, nothing he feels but the icy lash of the wind and her thin hands knuckled around the rim of his shell.

The bridge opens up before them like a dismal brick road to a city of gold and silver, Manhattan's towering vista sparkling against the night sky, and behind him Amber whoops and shrieks to the smog and the stars and he grins and pushes the bike harder until its answering growl echoes through his whole body as though he is a part of it and she is a part of him. The river shimmers as it reflects the city in long streaks of light that seem almost like a thousand roads into the heart of the island, as though he could drive the bike right off the side of the bridge and coast along them, anywhere he wanted to go.

The streets of Manhattan are roaring and vibrant, already teeming with people. Raphael sucks in a deep breath, feels his lungs expand against his plastron, his veins pounding with adrenaline as the city streams around them in a neon rainbow.

He turns into the 79th Street transverse, slowly easing up on the gas as Central Park looms darkly either side of them, the relentless clamour of the city abruptly swallowed up by the scrub and the evergreens. He follows the road along until they reach the rock tunnel, then smoothly mounts the pavement and brings the bike to a shuddering stop beneath its dark arch. It's only then he realises how numb his thighs are, how his sensitive tail prickles even though he had it tucked safely up against the rim of his carapace.

Behind him, Amber's grip tightens on his shell as she eases herself slowly off the bike. Her skinny legs stagger on the pavement as she tugs the helmet off. There's an ache in his muscles as he swings his leg over the bike and then clenches and releases his fists, every knuckle in his fingers stiff, before lifting the seat to tug his backpack out.

Amber shakes her head as its freed, her hair hanging from its knot in long, tangled strands around her freckled face and she laughs.

"Jesus, I feel like y'just fucked me for a week," she grins at him lopsidedly and his heartbeat is a rush as he hustles her quickly, away from the road, into the tiny stone stairwell that will lead them into the park. She's laughing breathlessly as he pushes her up against the rocky wall and tears his own helmet off, the cold air a shock against his face. And then, in the darkness of those sheltered stairs, he kisses her and she wraps her arms around his neck and opens her mouth to his and her tongue is like a lick of fire that sends a bolt of warmth down into his heart and spreads outwards in molten spikes.

For a long time they make out against the rough hewn stone bricks. His numb tail steadily warms, then thickens, the aching muscles in his legs easing. Her thin hands are icy at first when she pushes them up and under his hoodie, even through the thick keratin of his plastron, but then they warm and she cups one over the very spot his heart thuds hard, as though she can feel its beat.

He pulls away reluctantly and her breath is a warm gust against his face. There is just enough light trickling into the stairwell from the park above that he can see her eyes stay closed for a moment, lashes fluttering against the freckles that dust her cheeks. Then she opens them and he grins and flicks a lock of hair from her eyes with a gloved finger. She snorts and bats his hand away.

He puts the helmet back on and then reaches for her hand and they amble slowly up the stairs, towards the park. His phone buzzes against him and he dives into his pocket to check.

Two missed calls from Casey. Three messages. His eyes dart to the time. They made the two and a half hour trip in just over an hour. His lip quirks a little to see it, but then falls as he looks back to the notification banner. Quickly, he swipes his thumb over the screen.

_Bro where u at? Lets hang._

_Srsly Raph it's been weeks man. _

_just text me when u get this._

A knot twists in his gut as he thrusts the phone back into his pocket then glances at Amber. She's lighting a cigarette with one hand, the flame briefly illuminating her face. She looks at him, catches him staring, and smiles.

Amber squeezes his hand with her own and he gives her a tug as he starts down the pathway toward Belvedere Castle. The path is thick with leaves that crunch beneath their feet and their breath ghosts on the air before them.

"How was work?" he asks her as the folly castle rises up before them, a fanciful miniature that is cold grey stone against the dark sky.

She shrugs, turning the fuzzy collar of her faux fur coat up against her cheeks. "Yeah. Okay. You know. The fuckin' same."

He chuffs a little and nudges her. "Izzat good or bad?"

For a moment she is silent, taking a long drag on her cigarette and staring up at the castle where it stands in stark illumination, deserted and lonely. Then she sighs.

"Like, they're trying. They're all trying. But it is what it is. Fuckin' bureaucracy. Constant battle for funding. Competing with a hundred other NFPs for the same shitty little grants. They gotta prove they're worth it and to do that, they need stats."

They reach the castle and stop, tipping their heads back to gaze at the turret that, in the midst of a hundred skyscrapers, strains almost pitifully towards the distant clouds.

"So what does that mean?" he asks her.

She takes another draw on her cigarette, puffs out. "It means they're interferin' all the goddamn time. It means they want reports. It means fuckin' paperwork. It means they need results." She flicks the butt onto the pathway and grinds it out hard beneath her heel. "And a bunch of hustlin' junkies are never gonna be reliable enough to give it to 'em. You know this place is shut now, right?"

He turns to face her and grins wolfishly. "Since when's that an issue for a ninja turtle?"

She smiles back.

She slings his backpack over her own, braces a heel against his carapace and pulls herself up to straddle him. He threads his arms under her knees and hoists her higher before stripping off his gloves and slipping on the _shuko_.

Even with the backpacks she weighs nothing and he makes easy progress, arm over arm up the flagstone walls of the castle, the stone crumbling a little beneath the force of the spikes but holding true. Her fingers are threaded tight together around his neck, her ankles hitched over the rim of his carapace but he moves as quick as he can. It's an easier, shorter climb than the Wonder Wheel, but there's less distance for her to fall too, and no means for him to beat her down. His breathing is steady and easy and the pull and push of his muscles feels good as he climbs, his gaze fixed on where the tip of the turret presses silver-grey against the night sky. The strength of his young, healthy body makes him swell suddenly with pride and exhilaration and abruptly - almost too quickly - they have reached the top and he is swinging a leg over the stone railing and twisting swiftly, so she can let go even before he is fully safe himself.

She falls backwards onto her ass on the dusty stone and he snorts while she flips him the bird, her pale lips twisting in a grudging smirk. Then she takes the hand he offers and he tugs her to her feet.

"All this breakin' and enterin' for little old me?" she says dryly, not letting go of his hand.

"How else'm gonna impress a girl with your record?" he grins back. She can't help but snicker, her eyes crinkling at the corners with her smile, and his heart flips a little.

She eases the backpacks down onto the flagstones and he puts his helmet down beside them, then hand in hand they turn towards the parapets to look out over the park.

Turtle Pond gleams dark and shining as a mirror and beyond it the park stretches in planes of light and shadow. Many of the tree branches are heavy with leaves still and the lamps set regularly throughout the gardens and along the paths throw beams of golden light that set the trees within their fall blazing, the dying foliage in vibrant shades of red and orange and yellow, twisting branches black within them. Beyond the domes of light the park seems to swallow itself in shadow upon shadow, as though to step within them would be to vanish, become lost there. At the far outskirts, above the tops of the trees, the skyscrapers loom in silhouette, glittering with hundreds of tiny lights. He tells himself it's the frigid night air that steals his breath.

Beside him, Amber turns and presses a kiss against his cheek, her lips cool and dry.

"So what's gonna happen then?" he asks her as he stares out to the distant figures that still mill along the paths and across the grass. "With the Thistleways gig?"

She shrugs. "Dunno. What we do - it's not real work to them. A safe place people can just go and hang out and share shit - it don't mean anything to them. They don't see it as any good, just being there, just there for people who need a place to go. No one gives a fuck unless they can stick it on a spreadsheet - same people, coming every week. Measurable outcomes - safer using practices, legitimate employment, rehab. Only thing that means anything to them is numbers on a page. And if they're not satisfied when it comes to review time, they'll just cut the funding. It's such a load of shit."

Her voice is tinged with frustration and he remembers how, a few months ago, her face would light up when she talked about the outreach program. It had been strange and kinda sweet to see her verge on the brink of believing in something. He's been proud of her.

"That's fucked," he finally speaks, his voice rasping on the chill air. She shrugs again.

"I wonder where all the turtles are now," she says quietly, leaning over and folding her arms on the parapets to gaze down at the glossy black water below them. He snorts.

"Hibernatin', if they got any sense. Even if they weren't, they'd be asleep. No self-respectin' turtle gonna be sitting out on a rock when the sun's down. What's the point?"

For a moment she is silent, looking down into the water, furry coat hitched up to her cheeks.

"Do you like it? Being out in the sun?"

He turns away from the park, leaning back against the parapets. "Yeah. Sure. When I can. Doesn't everyone?" He folds his arms over his plastron, his heartbeat hardening. Humans like asking awkward questions like this, trying to figure how much animal they are. Amber doesn't do it so much, and it's different when she does, but even still...

She looks at him, one pale eyebrow hitched up. "Yeah, I like a little sunbake now and then." Her voice is wry, her freckles dark and splotchy in the dim light and he chuckles and reaches out to run a thumb across her cheek. "Kisses from God, is what my gran used to call 'em."

His heart lurches at the same instant a shadow flickers across her eyes and she turns away to look down at the pond again. He tries anyway.

"You were close with your gran?"

Her jaw tightens and when she lifts a fresh cigarette to her lips, he can see her hands are trembling slightly. "Yeah. Can't believe people just dump their pet turtles here."

A flash of anger heats his blood for an instant, frustration tightening his fists. Is it so bad he wants to know about her childhood? It's not like he pushes. He almost snaps at her, then swallows it down, fingertips digging into the stone behind him.

He kicks at the dusty stone. "Hey, people dump their own babies in the trash. Like they're gonna cut animals a break. Besides," he turns back around and gazes down into the pond, at the inky water that glimmers coldly, surrounded by trees and rocks that by the light of day are glorious. "This's gotta be a better life. Room to move. Plenty of your own kind. Freedom."

She lifts her cigarette to her lips and takes a long drag. "Yeah."

In his pocket, his phone starts ringing again.

She looks at him, brows knotting a little at the sound of the phone vibrating off his plastron. "You need to get that?"

"Nah." Even as he says it, guilt twists in his gut. It might not be Casey, but there's not many other possibilities.

It has been weeks since they've hung out. He's lost count. They haven't even spoken much, just the odd text here and there. Nothing deep. The last one was about how the Giants were still playing like chumps.

He hasn't even told Casey about Amber.

"C'mon," he turns away and strides over to his backpack, sits down on the stones. "I brought dinner."

She smiles to see the bottle of wine he pulls out. "How'd you get your hands on that?"

He grins, pulls out the take-out container from Di Fara's. It's cold by now of course, but who cares. He's hungry after the long ride. "The Nightwatcher's got connections," he jokes. "Only the best five buck Sauvignon for my girl."

"Di Fara's too, you are spoiling me," she teases dryly, taking a last good suck on her cigarette and hitching her battered jeans up with thin fingers to sit beside him. Too late, he realises he forgot a rug for them to sit on, but she doesn't seem to mind. "Did you line up for that?"

"Only thirty minutes. Are you actually gonna eat some?" He twists off the cap on the wine bottle and hands it to her for first drink. He forgot cups too, but they've never used them before. Still, it coulda been nice.

She takes a slug, shrugs. "Yeah. You know. I'm a little hungry."

He hands her the box for the first slice, smirking. She doesn't eat all that often or that much, and he's glad she wants to now. She picks up a slice and nibbles cautiously, a weirdness tensing her features, and he bursts out laughing.

"What?" She's indignant and confused as he takes a chomp from his own slice. It's stone cold, the long strings of cheese chewy and the thin crust soggy from the olive oil it was fried in. He shrugs.

"You look like you never ate a damn pizza before," he tells her and she pulls a face at him and takes a bigger bite, eyes widening in alarm when the cheese stretches and stretches, and he laughs some more as she twists the slice around, up and down and out, trying to snap the elastic threads of mozzarella.

"Fuck you," she says with her mouth full, and washes it down with a swig of wine.

He takes another bite and his snout wrinkles as the bland, greasy mouthful goes down hard, reaching for the wine bottle.

"What a fuckin' tourist trap," he grumbles as he take a gulp to wash away the oil slick and chewy, burnt crust and this time she laughs at him.

Crummy or not, he's hungry and devours three slices in the time it takes her to make her way through half and they look up to the sky and watch the planes fly over the skyscrapers while the city hums all around them. She leans against him after a while, her thin shoulder pressing into his bicep. Between them, his phone buzzes with a message.

"You're popular tonight," she observes, "maybe somethin's wrong?"

Fear is an icy blade across as his heart as he fishes into his pocket for the phone. He hadn't thought of that. It could be Don. It could be about Splinter.

But it's just Casey again.

_bro either i pissed you off somehow or u got a girl. r u holding out on me?_

Raphael swallows hard and jams the phone back in his pocket, ignoring the curious glance Amber shoots his way. Casey's probably just joking, trying to tease him into a reply. But his heart thuds a little harder, all the same.

He's not sure why he hasn't told Casey yet. When he was younger and dumber and just getting to know the older human man, he had entertained an occasional fantasy of swaggering over to Casey's place, dropping in the window and when his best bud asked where he'd been all night, he'd casually say something like - "yanno. Gettin' laid." Then stand back to see the look on Casey's face.

It had always been a stupid fantasy and it wasn't long before he'd given it up. He wasn't ever going to get laid.

"Everythin' okay?" Amber says. He goes still and deeply inhales, his plastron swelling.

"I woulda said if it wasn't." He doesn't mean to sound as terse as he does, but all the same it comes out like that and because it's Amber she just cocks a brow at him, then reaches for the bottle of wine. It's comforting, how easily she can shrug off his moods. He thinks she might be the only one who's never told him to chill out. Never said he should take it easy.

Amber takes another big gulp, then sighs and leans against him again and he wraps an arm around her thin shoulders and turns his face a little to inhale the soft, earthy scent of her hair.

So now he _is_ getting laid. He's got a girlfriend. He's in love.

And he still hasn't told his best pal about it.

It's funny, now it's happening, how it's difficult to fathom bragging about it the way his younger self imagined. He is still getting used to the emotions she stirs, the way all that tenderness and passion is so immense, swelling inside him until he can scarcely breathe with it, echoing in each aching breath he draws. How the sight of her makes his heart thud so fast and so hard it hurts, and he wishes it would stop and wants it never to stop. It's as private as the beat of her breath against his neck when he moves inside her, as secret as the light in her eye when she smiles at him, and he doesn't want to share it, not with anyone else. Not yet.

His phone buzzes again and this time he pulls it out quickly to check.

_srsly bro if u need somethin man i'm here u know that. if u want 2 talk about shit like with ur dad. or just go crack some skulls. been a long time man. hit me up._

Raphael's throat is tight now, his heart thudding hard and dull against his sternum as he puts the phone away. Him and Casey don't get touchy-feely. Shit, he's pretty sure that's the longest text his pal has ever sent him.

It's not as though they never talk. It's just incidental to the brawls and battles that serve as their preferred way of dealing with shit. But it's not like he keeps things from Casey. Not on purpose.

Now he's got a whole bunch of secrets.

"That was a new bike, huh?" Amber says, shifting a little closer to him and stirring him from his guilt.

"Old one," he replies. "First one. Donnie - " and he stops, words catching as he remembers the day Donatello first revealed the souped up Suzuki to him, the thrill of pride in his brother's voice, the gleeful anticipation of Raphael's own delight. " - Don fixed it up." It seems then that regret is a brutal grip around his heart, dragging it down into his gut. He and Donatello don't talk at all anymore. They are nothing to each other now but shadows that slip around the doorways just beyond sight and the remnants of necessity; an almost empty coffee cup on the kitchen table, a damp towel tossed into the hamper.

Her hand steals onto his thigh and squeezes, thin fingers cold even through the sweat pants. "It's a nice bike," she says. "But it don't go like the other one." And despite himself and the assault of thoughts that is stripping him raw, he smiles, small and wry.

"Nothin' handles like my baby," he says, and the sky above them streaks black and fluttering with a flock of bats.

She elbows him, bony joint somehow finding the tenderest part of his bridge so he grunts. "Izzat a challenge?"

His smile spreads wider and his other arm wraps tight around her, tugging her close so he can nuzzle into her neck. "You offerin'?"

She snorts, playfully squirms. "I better not be competin' with a fuckin' bike."

"Well, a bike can't suck my dick," he points out reasonably and she growls as he chuckles into her hair. "You got her beat there."

She twists and swings a leg over his lap, straddling him. He cups her ass in his hands as she fixes him with a flinty eye, her thin hands grasping the collar of his hoodie. A gust of wind rustles the autumn leaves that have swept into a corner of the turrets and from the city there is the distant blare of a siren. Her cheeks are flushed with wine and chill and her hair scatters wildly around her face.

"Keep it up," she says lightly, her fingertips tapping out a muffled beat on his plastron. "And she's the only handlin' you'll get for awhile."

He steals a kiss and her lips are tangy with cheap wine. "But not forever, huh?"

"Fuck you."

"Okay." He tips her backwards and she laughs, hands fisting in his hoodie as he sets her down against the dusty stones and the hard plating of his plastron presses firm against her hips. For a moment everything else is only memory, as easily scattered as the grit that collects between the flagstones, leaving him swept blank and easily warmed by her touch, her smile, the soft hitch of her breath as their mouths brush.

She strokes a hand back over his cheek and her fingertips are cool and gentle. "I ain't resting my bare ass against this grimy old stone," she tells him, her eyes glittering dark.

He grins. "That rattrap hotel is spoiling you." They kiss again and her hand slips up to cup his head and press him closer. His heartbeat rushes suddenly as though the taste of her has laced his blood. She is the secret that keeps all his other secrets. She is the only one who knows everything. Who knows about it all. It is easier to be with her, where nothing needs to be said, than to bear the burden of all he has to hold in silence with anyone else.

And he's hooked.

He pulls her to her feet and for a while they sit on top of the parapets and gaze out across the park cast in planes of black and green and gold, at the few people yet who amble along the paths and over the grass, at the bats who cut like shadows across the sky and at the dark, icy water that hides slumbering turtles. They huddle together and finish the wine and for a time his heart lightens a little and he forgets how much is wrong and how little he can do about it.


	23. Chapter 20

Rain hazes the street in relentless streaks of silver between which the neon sparkles and runs. Amber jams her hands in the pockets of her hoodie and shivers.

It's been raining for days, the gutters choked and filthy, the pavements gleaming bright and reflecting vivid blotches of colour that shatter beneath the tread of her boots. Her feet are always wet it seems, skin squelching against the leather til it's raw. The wind whips her hair against her face so hard it feels every strand could cut like paper and she's licked her bottom lip so much it has cracked thickly down the very center and she tastes blood with every swipe of her tongue.

The cars do not slow down very often, tires hissing through the putrid water as they roar past and she can't stand as far back from the curb as she would like, not if she wants to be seen through soaked and speckled windscreens. The ones she gets into are stifling, the smell of wet wool and sweat and the faint mustiness of desperation all the more oppressive beneath the heat of the radiators. But getting out again, to the lash and sting of cold autumn rain, is always worse.

The sidewalk is barren this late on a rainy Tuesday evening far from the tourist epicentre. Those who pass have their heads down, hoodies pulled up, hats crammed down low, negotiating the slop that has made a mess of the pavement. Lenny's is open, because Lenny is a nighthawk who lives above his shop, but the door is shut and the strains of _This Mess We're In_, Thom Yorke's soaring falsetto pure and heart-wrenching, is distant as the echo of a dream. She sways in a pool of burnished light that streams through the glass windows and pretends it is warmer beneath its glow.

Amber takes a drag on her cigarette and chokes on a lungful of smoke, her raw throat protesting so that she sputters and coughs as though she is thirteen and lighting up for the first time again. Against the phlegm that congests her sinuses the nicotine is dull and disappointing but she smokes anyway, determinedly, defiantly, clinging to the only pleasure she's got on that drenched and miserable sidewalk, even if it isn't much of a pleasure right then. She snorts into the limp tissue fisted in one hand, scrunches it into an even smaller ball, feeling it damp against her palm. She has three tissues left and she's trying to make them last, cos the rain is unceasing and the nearest convenience store is across the road and down a block with no canopies.

The street is eerily quiet save for the patter of the rain and the occasional rush of a passing car. She watches the street lights flash green and red on the darkly glittering tar, swipes her dripping nose with a sleeve and wonders how much longer she can stand this tonight.

Then there is the rumble of a bike engine and her heart skips like a stone and she looks up to see him, on the decked out red Suzuki, in sweats and a helmet that gleams, pulling up to the curb where she waits. And even though she wasn't waiting for him, she knows her wait is over now.

The desk attendant barely looks up from his newspaper when they check in, indifferent to the hulking stranger who lurks in the musty lobby wearing a darkly visored helmet. Just another trick who doesn't want his face seen. Like anyone cares. The floor creaks beneath their feet as they step out of the elevator, the threadbare carpet vaguely sticky and the walls are yellowed and streaked with grime under the unforgiving pall of fluorescence.

"Didn't I tell ya to take the night off?" he demands when they get to their room and she is fumbling with the key.

She glares at the indifferent sheen of the helmet's surface, wiggles the key in the rattling lock and finally it clicks. The door sticks in the jamb. He steps forward and gives it a shove with one gloved hand and it abruptly gusts inwards.

"Well, I'm here now, ain't I?" she retorts as they enter the tiny room, the air faintly reeking of mold and old linen, the stale scent of a thousand anonymous guests before them.

"Yeah, but how long were you out there for?" His query is brusque as he tugs off the helmet and drops it down onto the chipped pine-wood dresser and unzips his oversized hoodie. It's strange how much she's seeing him in something other than the dull grey leather of the Nightwatcher armour lately, but he hasn't been hitting the streets as often. "Shouldn't be out in this weather."

She shrugs her backpack off onto the dingy carpet, pulls off her hoodie. She's drenched from the bike ride and the wet polyester fur clings to her skin.

"I can take care of myself, Raphael, thanks all the same. I think I can figure my own shi - " she tries to choke back the coughing fit before it can take hold but she's wracked with it despite herself, the tiny room echoing with the awful, rasping bark and she bends almost double with its violence, the fingertips of one hand splayed across her lips. She can feel her ribs rattle under the force it convulses her body in and Raphael folds his arms and stares at her, grim and smug at once.

"Fuck you," she sputters as the hacking coughs ebb, then looks around for a tissue.

There's only the thin, cheap roll of toilet paper and she tears off a handful and blows her nose, shivering on the dank tiles of the little bathroom.

He follows her in, stripped now of all his clothing, and pushes her down onto the toilet seat.

"You been to a doctor yet?" he asks her as he grabs one skinny ankle and tugs off her boot.

She rolls her eyes and blows her nose again into the wad of paper, her sinuses rattling. "It's just a fuckin' cold."

He yanks off her other boot and chucks it down onto the tiles. "Jesus, Lex, you're sick!"

She knows what he means. She has Hepatitis. If she doesn't look after herself, shit could get real bad.

But it's not like she ever looks after herself anyway, so it all kinda seems much of a muchness.

She wants to argue but the truth is she can't be fucked. Her head swims a little and she's tender all over - her neck and underarms, the soft creases of her groin. Her hair plasters against her spine and a tremble grips her limbs as she slumps on the toilet seat, sudden exhaustion rushing upon her. She didn't want to work tonight anyway. It doesn't matter.

So she just rolls her eyes at him.

But he's turned around to switch on the shower and doesn't see.

He pulls her to her feet and tugs her wet dress up and over her head. She sighs irritably and thinks about telling him she's not a fucking child but it feels like too much effort, too hard when just lifting her arms is agony. He takes her gently by the hips, his enormous hands chill and clammy, and for a second their eyes lock and her breath catches at the unexpected care in his gaze. Then they are in the cramped little cubicle and beneath a deluge of hot water, finally, almost scalding, hammering down on their heads and shoulders, drenching them again under a flood of blissful warmth.

She gasps and tips her head back, the spray softly needling her skin, streaming through her hair. Raphael's hands are still on her hips and they are hot now, the rough scutes of his plastron firm against her breasts and she clings to his arms, feels the hard muscle under her fingertips. Warmed by the water, titillated by the closeness of their naked bodies, desire flickers in her groin, flares upwards to set her heart racing. When his mouth, warm and wet, finds her neck and sends a flood rushing across her flesh, she lifts a leg and hooks it around his waist, her ankle hitching into the groove that runs the rim of his carapace. His powerful thigh is between her legs and she rubs herself against the long, firm muscle there, her head still tipped back, her eyes shut beneath the cascade. She can feel him looking at her now but doesn't stop, her thumbs tracing the unyielding curves of his biceps as she grinds, balanced on the toes of one foot on the slippery shower floor.

He lifts her easily, pressing her up against the wall beyond the water's gush, where the tiles are still dry and cold so that she sucks in a sharp breath, and then moans guttural and abrupt when he pushes inside her. The water streaming between their bodies helps, but she wasn't ready, not quite and her fingertips dig hard into the hard flesh of his arms and he grunts and she knows he likes it.

He fucks her hard and fast up against the shower wall, the water running off them in hot rivers, trickling down to slip between the crevice of her pussy, around the girth of his thick cock where it slides rapidly in and out of her. He's so big it tugs the tender flesh of her vulva in with every thrust, skimming the soft bulge of her clit, eliciting the barest friction until she's squirming on his dick, chasing ecstasy.

His grunts echo off the tiles, punctuated by the hitch of her breath. She's juiced up enough now and lets him pin her hips against the wall, massive thumbs pressing into the hollows there and holding her still so he can go harder and deeper and rougher. Her nails drag wet grooves into his flesh and he groans and thrusts into her so close that she is chased abruptly over the edge and tumbles into euphoric oblivion. He follows moments later and she can feel the thick pulse of him deep inside her, her eyes slitting open against the blur of water to trace the veins that bulge in his neck, twisting out across his shoulders and down every hard crest of his arms as his entire body goes rigid, his teeth gritted hard and eyes squeezed shut.

For a long moment they stay as they are, entwined beneath the water's cascade, clinging to each other as though the shower is a storm and they might be swept away if they let go.

He's barely put her down when she's wracked with another harsh fit of coughing, clinging to his arm as her feet slip from the force of it, her lungs painfully contracting.

"Fuck," he mutters, turning the taps off and reaching for the thin, rough towels folded over the rack, rubbing one quick and brusque over his body. "Got carried away."

"A little," she agrees hoarsely. Now that the fervour of the moment has faded, without the bolstering heat of the shower, she feels crummy again, limp and aching and woozy. For a moment she cannot bear the thought of moving, but then he has wrapped one knobbly towel around her and lifts her up and she can't summon even the pretence of an objection, just rests her head on his shoulder and lets him carry her back out to the bed.

The bed is lumpy and rocks wildly beneath them as they lay down, the pillows are musty and the sheets are threadbare but a strange peace steals over her as she lays there and lets him work the towel through her long, wet hair. The radiator hums loudly in a corner, intermittently spitting out flaccid gusts of heat, and they huddle close beneath the covers and beyond the window the rain thunders down, rattling the glass and drowning out the endless pulse of the city beneath its roar.

"Y'oughta see a doctor," he grumbles as he smooths damp strands of hair back over her ear and she grunts and scrapes her fingernails softly down the finely ridged plates of his plastron.

"Didn't you just _give_ me a good seein' to?" she mutters, and cannot help the curve of her lips.

He snorts, but she can tell he's trying not to laugh and nuzzles in closer against his neck. One big hand is softly kneading her back and shoulders, soothing the fever-ache of her swollen glands, and she can feel herself melting into his embrace, steadily succumbing. She doesn't have the energy to fight it. The truth is it feels too good to be touched like this, with tenderness, with desire that wants only for her to be happy. It's been so many years since she's been touched in love, just love. It's terrifying, but not as much as how quickly she has started to want it, so that she lays there and lets him caress her without flinching or turning away.

Once, she thought she would never again be able to endure gentleness. Not without the terrible wrench of her gut, her heart seizing so that it seemed she would die from the bone-piercing horror of it and all that it had meant. There had been a time that the soft stroke of a hand along her hair could make her puke, make her wrench violently away, scrambling as though she could leap out of her skin and away from the memory of that touch.

Now, when Raphael does it, her heart slows rather than quickens and the tight strung of her limbs slackens until she softly folds into him, wanting more, and more, and more, as though she has been starving all these years and never knew.

Amber opens her eyes and looks up into his face. His eyes are shut, his brow furrowed a little as his huge fingertips continue to gently knead her back. Her gaze traces the broad forehead, the blunt snout and the wide line of his mouth, the mottled green skin, all the things that make him so startlingly unhuman, all the things she scarcely sees now, so used has she become to his difference.

He feels her staring and opens his eyes and her heart flips at the depth of them, the eternity of consciousness there.

"Take a picture," he grumbles and shifts a little and she runs her hands along his side, fingertips trailing over the thick tissue that webs his plastron and carapace.

"But you hate your picture being taken," she replies and he snorts and swipes his hand across her face, his leathery palm rough and huge.

"Smart-ass." His mouth quirks at the corner and she runs a leg up and over his thigh, pressing close against him so her nipples scratch the coarse scutes of his plastron. He grabs her leg and hitches it higher and the rim of his carapace presses hard and ridged against her calf. "Sorry about before."

It takes her a moment, then she realises he means for fucking her in the shower, while she's sick and feeling like shit. She sniffs.

"No you're not." The press of his hand on her leg is not enough, her skin yearns for the soft run of his palm up and over her hip, the slope of her back.

He smirks and her heart bursts like a song. "Nah, I'm not." And then his hand does race up her thigh, up and over her ass, skimming the bony cord of her spine to press and rub between her shoulder blades and her eyes glaze and she is limp and helpless in his arms and it scares her how little she is scared to be like this.

She sniffles and sputters a little and his face grows grave, his brow knotting together.

"Y'gotta see a doctor," he says and she rolls her eyes.

"Jesus."

"Fuck, Lex, c'mon."

"You got any idea what a headache that'd be? I got no insurance. No identification either."

She glares at him, defying him to deny the ordeal that is the American Healthcare System. But he just glares back.

"It could be somethin' really bad. You ever think'a that?"

And she remembers then that his father is somewhere deep below the city, bedridden and barely clinging to life. So she rolls her eyes again and nestles in against his neck.

"I'll go to the clinic in the mornin'. Okay?"

"Fuckin' thank you."

She won't go. There's an outstanding warrant out on her. And she doesn't want the trouble anyway. But the promise has calmed him, the tension easing from his body as he holds her.

Outside the rain grows heavier still and she listens to it hammering brutally against the glass and her eyes grow heavier and she breathes him in, the heady masculine scent of him. Suddenly, she is elated to be here, wrapped up in bed with her love, away from the night. Here, in this crummy, fleabag motel on a smelly old bed, it is paradise.

She coughs again, her throat seizing painfully and he sighs and pushes her hair back out of her face.

"You sound like shit."

She shrugs, knuckles at her wet nose. "I feel like shit." Her voice cracks, hardly more than a hoarse whisper and she coughs some more, her ribs straining hard. "Fuck, I'm thirsty."

"Lemme get you some water."

The sudden absence of him leaves her chill, but her limbs by then are too heavy to pull the covers closer. He has soothed away the last of her defences and fever storms her body now that there is no reason anymore to resist. She slumps against the pillow and waits for him, wanting only to be wrapped up in his arms again and, for once, to sleep away the night.

He emerges from the bathroom, paper cup filled with water from the tap grasped in one great hand. She watches him blearily as he approaches, this enormous creature who is more turtle than man and the strangest thing of all is that he is so familiar to her now. Every rough edge and hard muscle, the way the light patterns over the green of his skin, the scratches and scrapes that mark his plastron. The broad planes of his face, the blunt snout and strong jaw that affirms his masculinity, the large, dark eyes that are always so fierce and defiant and unflinching and somehow all at once so soft. Or maybe that's only because she ever sees him when he is looking at her. Maybe he succumbs to her as well.

She takes the cup from him and drinks. The water is tepid and dank but she drinks it all as he eases back into the bed beside her, drawing her close against him again.

It is bliss to lay back down in his arms and she rubs her cheek against the rough skin of his throat, her fingertips scratching softly against his scutes, her gaze blurring as her eyelids drop of their own accord. He nuzzles into her damp and frizzled hair, the press of his three-fingered hand firm and close against her back. The staccato beat of the rain lulls her further still and the room seems to tip up around her as oblivion tugs her down and she thinks this is not so very different to getting junked up, except she can only crave him in her veins, can only strive to bind them.

This is the brink of danger, the moment at which she is the most vulnerable, and for years now she has met it resolutely alone. But she lies there with him and feels it creep steadily over her and she is not afraid. There is nothing about him that she could mistake, not even at the edge of consciousness, for anyone else and her weary mind wonders if maybe that's why, in the end, she has been able to be with him at all.

She seems only to shut her eyes for a moment, but when she next opens them the room is spun grey with the soft haze of morning light drifting between the blinds. The rain has slowed to a patter now, a quiet murmur against the window pane like a lullaby soothing her from waking. Her lashes flutter and she turns her face further into the pillow like she could fall into the depths of the bed. Her body feels deliriously heavy and as she shifts, the bed softly lurching, she realises she is anchored down by Raphael's arm around her, by the close press of his armoured body against hers.

He grunts reluctantly and his grip around her tightens. She does not resist. She feels the great rise of his chest as he inhales deeply and then he is slowly shifting, a knee crooked and nudging hers, his hand gently kneading the soft flesh below her ribs.

"Gotta go," he mutters, his voice muffled by her hair, and her hands curl against him, an impulse to cling abruptly seizing them.

"Don't," she whispers back and thinks it is only right then, at this moment between dreaming and wakefulness, that she could say it.

He groans and his hand twines through her tangled hair. "I gotta."

"No."

She lifts her head and kisses him, finding his mouth without opening her eyes, breathing into him. Her lips part, pushing his open and she darts her tongue against the warm, wet plane beneath his lip. He grunts again and she can feel the tension gather in his muscles where they press against her, the sudden stiffening as awareness grows. She runs a skinny thigh up and over his, pressing close enough that he can feel the heat between her thighs, the hint of its closeness, and her fingertips trail down over his plastron, softly stroking the sensitive ridge where his scutes meet flesh, eliciting a shudder that makes her smile. She slips a hand down between his thighs and finds his thickening tail, already curving towards her, and massages it slowly, her thumb swiping the moist slit of his cloaca. Raphael's breath hitches and his hand fists in her hair and then his mouth is nuzzling at her jaw, teeth nipping her throat.

"Stay," she breathes, tipping her head back against the pillow as he nips and sucks at her neck, her nipples hardening as sensation rushes over her skin. "Let's stay here today. Let's just stay."

Outside, the rain grows heavier once more, beating in an endless rhythm against the streets and the room darkens, enveloping them in shadows deep and soft and beneath the covers they are warm, their bodies languorously pushing and grinding against the other. She is on her back now and he has forgotten about anything except the depths of her and she knows he will stay. She has him now, for the day and for the night yet to come, where the rain draws a veil between them and all else.


	24. Chapter 21

Raphael unzips the duffel bag and pauses for a moment at the sight of his reflection in the shiny visor of the helmet.

He doesn't look at himself often. Vanity is Michelangelo's domain. Leonardo's too, who will watch the fluid progression of his kata in the mirror as though entranced. The thought of his absent brother in all his gliding perfection shows on his face just then, shows in the sudden twist of his mouth and the furrow of his brow and Raphael grabs the helmet and tugs it roughly out of the bag, his throat constricting. He hasn't been counting, but it feels like months since they last got a postcard.

Or maybe he just hasn't noticed an addition to the motley collection stuck to the refrigerator, clamped there beneath magnets shaped like superheroes and hamburgers. No one would've told him if there had been one. No one talks to him anymore.

A tremor runs along his arms as his muscles tense, and he cracks his knuckles and grabs hold of the suit. It's been awhile since he last geared up and rode along the streets, starving for trouble and all the vindication to be found in its brutal midst.

It's freezing in the tunnel, December's first days setting in with a chill that frosts the streets, leaving them grey and glittering, a bite to the air that promises winter will be savage this year. He zips up the suit and the thick leather traps the mild heat his body releases so that he no longer feels so sluggish and stupid and his blood warms, anticipating what the night may hold.

His phone, discarded on a rotting milk crate, vibrates against the wood. He picks it up and flips open the casing, the vague tightening of anxiety across his chest that has started accompanying every message he gets now familiar, if still unbearable.

But the message is from Amber and his eyes widen slightly to see it.

_51 Walker St, Tribeca. Rooftop._

She never messages except in reply to him, and he never messages her except to check that she's doing okay. Their exchanges are brief and to the point. _u home ok? _was the last one he had sent her, after a particularly violent thunderstorm had flooded the streets. _yeah_ was her reply. His first impulse is to get worried, wonder what the meaning of this message is, wonder if she's in some sort of trouble. And his next thought is that there is only one way to find out.

Tribeca is not a neighbourhood the Nightwatcher has ever shown interest in. Affluent and fashionable, its residents are complacent in the knowledge that their realm is the safest in the whole of the great city. He keeps to the rooftops, boots rasping against the stone, the frigid air rushing past him with every leap, the sounds of the city thrumming all around. Manhattan's skyscrapers glitter silver and black against the night sky, the streets below threaded in gold from the lights that run their length, that flash from the cars that roar along them. Somehow, the city seems more spacious here, the air clearer. He's not prone to flights of imagination, but still he wonders.

Fifty-One Walker Street is a building of condos nestled between one of apartments and another of offices, its rooftop rising a full floor above theirs. He stops at the dividing wall atop number forty-nine, tips his head back to gaze at the ledge of fifty one and wonders how cautious he should be. Fucking Amber, with her cryptic messages and insolent mystery. If she's not in any trouble right now, she will be when he gets up there.

He uses his shuko, clambering silently up in the shadows cast by the wall, and crouches near the top, clinging to the brick with the sharp spikes looped over his hand, listening intently. There is nothing but the surrounding buzz of the city and finally he eases himself over the ledge and drops onto the rooftop.

Straightening up, he finds himself on a path paved with large flagstones, bordered by potted plants and dimly illuminated by soft domes of light spaced at regular intervals between the frost-bitten greenery. The penthouse is dark within, the city lights playing off the polished glass. He eyes the windows cautiously as he sets along the path, though instinct tells him he's not being watched.

Rounding the corner of the penthouse, he is greeted by a large courtyard that overlooks the glittering city, stretching out in every direction, breathtaking and brilliant all the way to the brink of the sky so that, for a moment, he is helplessly captivated by the sight. The courtyard is dotted with trees and bushes in deep troughs, softly lit by tiny lights at their bases so the last defiant fronds are vividly green against the dusky shadows and cautiously he steps amongst them, scanning the garden.

She's sitting on a table gazing out across the city, a lithe silhouette cross-legged and smoking, the bright point of her cigarette flickering against the night. He wonders if she knows he is there yet, but she doesn't turn, just smokes and watches the city lights glimmer.

For a little while he watches her, billows of smoke misting on the air as she exhales, the dark shimmer of her hair as she shakes it out down her back. She fumbles in the pocket of her faux fur coat and he grins silently when she flicks open the phone he gave her and checks for messages, the screen cold blue in the darkness. No one has that number but him.

He clears his throat and she starts a little before giving her head a defiant little toss and takes a hard drag on her cigarette, not turning around.

"About time," she drawls and he is smirking as he strides across the courtyard towards her.

"That's what you get for leavin' me hangin'," he retorts, tugging off the helmet and setting it down on the table beside her. In the dim light she is pale and ethereal, her eyes dark, her hair tangled down around her shoulders. She takes a final draw on her cigarette, one red brow cocked at him, then grinds it out on the table. He cocks his head at her. "So what the fuck we doin' here?"

Her lip quirks in a little smile and she shrugs. "I thought it'd be nice."

He stares at her. "Sure, it's nice as fuck. But how'd you get up here? Who owns this joint?"

She slides off the table and stretches her arms up above her head, her skinny back curving. An icy breeze rustles her hair and overhead the clouds are thunderous and hover low.

"One of my old regs," she explains. "Got a rescue fantasy. He's away but he gave me the key."

Raphael folds his arms across his plastron and cocks a brow at her as she saunters to the wall and looks out across the crowded horizon, the glow of the city setting cold fire in her hair. "He ain't worried y'gonna rob him blind?"

She throws him a look over her shoulder, the twist of her lips wry. "I would." She is not offended. "Normally. But he's worth holdin' onto. He pays ten kay a night."

He is floored and stares at her, struck silent. It's an almost unfathomable amount of money to him, even given the bags containing ten times that in the various dens of drug lords and launderers, the tables scattered high with patterned green bills amidst cocaine and heroin and automatic weapons. He has never taken that much. That kind of money would make it seem as though it's what he's there for. Once he took a full grand and felt so uneasy about it that he ended up jamming it behind a loose slab in his bedroom and forgot about it for weeks. Another time he had gone to take a handful of hundreds from a duffel bag dumped on an expensive leather couch, only to notice the crumpled edges were spattered with something dark and damp and realised it was blood. It had been awhile after that he had taken anything at all.

Money like that was the domain of the criminal and the powerful. Not some ragged little junkie street walker who lived in a squat and wore children's clothes. That he should know someone who would be paid in amounts like that for a single night's work seemed beyond comprehension. It was impossible, but then again his life was defined by the impossible. Defined by...

"What the fuck you even do with money like that?" he sputters finally as she sashays across the flagstones to the deck at the far corner of the rooftop. She shrugs again and climbs the steps, unzipping her coat and letting it drop to the paving.

"I dunno. It's good to have it. Just in case." And she flashes him a little look, points of light dancing across her shadowed eyes like stars. "After all, I been takin' a bit of time off lately."

He strides across the courtyard towards the deck where she is kicking off her boots, tugging off her thick socks. "You mean to tell me you just got thousands of dollars hangin' 'round someplace, doin' nothin'?"

She clicks her tongue and shimmies out of her jeans. "You want some?"

"No!" he cries, his fist falling with a dull thud on the decking. "I just - just don't get - and what the fuck are you doin'?" She's pulling off her sweater and shirt now, her pale skin gleaming pearly in the glow from the nearby skyscrapers.

Naked, she tosses the last of her clothing onto the pile and shakes her hair back over her shoulders, jutting a hip out and gazing down at him from lowered lids.

"Goin' for a dip," she replies coolly. "Come join me."

He'd noticed the hot tub, of course. He is trained to observe every detail of a space immediately upon entering it. The steam from the heated water wafts up into the freezing night air, billowing on the breeze, illuminated smoky white by the countless lights that sparkle eternal all around them.

"But it's fuckin' freezin'," he counters lamely.

She shrugs and runs her skinny hands up and over her long, thick hair, gathering it together and twisting it up and around her head, knotting it on itself. "The water's hot." And an impish little grin tugs the corner of her mouth.

He gazes up at her where she stands, naked and gleaming, above him. Behind her the city is a sparkling vista that cuts against the velvet sky, the soaring tips of the skyscrapers seeming on the verge of vanishing within the thunderous clouds that gather ever thicker above them. She is dappled in light and shadow, the jut of her hip gleaming silver, gold streaking her hair, each pronounced rib a darkened curve below her tiny breasts, her nipples stiff and blackened from the cold. He can see the deep cleft that nestles between her thighs, a black line that makes his throat abruptly dry. Then he is tugging the zip at his throat, the frigid night like a smack against his flesh.

Amber turns around and steps over to the top, her scrawny ass shimmering, the knots of her spine dark blotches down her back. If she had been a stranger to him, he wouldn't have been stirred as he is now, yanking off his boots and stepping quickly out of the suit, a tremor suddenly stiffening his tail. But everything about her, from the insolent twitch of her hips, to the freckles black clusters down both arms, conjure powerful memories of what it is like to be with her and now he can't imagine anyone more desirable.

"Fuck!" she exclaims as she steps into the steaming water. "Get in quick, it hits like a thousand fuckin' needles."

He stomps up and onto the deck and snorts as she dips low in the water, grimacing. "Serves ya right for standin' round posin' like that."

Her eyes glitter as he steps into the tub, the hot water sending an intense flood of feeling up his legs. "Convinced you, though."

He scoffs and lowers himself right down up to his neck, his body quickly adjusting to the heat so that it swirls around him like an embrace, heady and delicious. "Didn't need convincin'. This beats sittin' on the goddamn table."

"Okay." Her voice is throaty and smug and he rolls his eyes and turns to look out across the city.

"Fuck," he mutters as he beholds the endless expanse of silver and gold threads that outline the shadows, stretching into the horizon. He has seen the city from the rooftops countless times before of course, has sat on stone ledges and grimy couches and stared until his eyes dazzled, has watched it streak past him in long ribbons of brilliance as he hurtles across buildings with his brothers. But it's different like this somehow, in a hot tub on a rooftop garden that belongs to a millionaire, with his naked girlfriend opening a bottle of champagne beside him, the cork popping like a gunshot against the distant din of the streets below, the golden liquid hissing as she pours it out into two flutes resting on the deck next to the tub.

"This is Waterford crystal," she says, handing him a glass and he cocks a brow ridge at her.

"Is that s'posed to mean somethin' to me?"

She grins and clinks the rim of her flute against his and it rings, sharp and clear. "And the champagne is Dom Perignon."

He glances down at the glass, at the infinite fizz of bubbles that stream upwards through the sparkling wine, then shrugs and takes a slug.

She waits, chapped lips curved, as he wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist and thoughtfully contemplates the delicate crystal grasped in his huge, green hand.

"So?"

He shrugs again. "Can't beat a good beer."

She laughs abruptly, her mouth opening wide, her eyes crinkling at the corners and a gush of warmth that has nothing to do with the booze jets through him.

"I'll drink to that," she says, and sculls her glass.

He smirks and drinks again and then she is refilling their glasses from the icy bottle, foam running over the rim of hers to spill into the foaming water around them. There are tiny lights set into the walls of the hot tub, illuminating the water glacial blue and he cannot resist looking at her now, where she sits naked and submerged.

Her fair skin is flushed pink from the heat and the steam, splotches of colour that darken her thighs and belly and throat, her thickly clustered freckles vivid. Her nipples are soft now, huge and ruddy and with her legs crossed he can see the deep pink folds of her pussy, bare and clear beneath the water and his tail twitches. Somehow, she seems more naked like this, lit closely all around, and he takes another deep drink, his skin suddenly prickling too hot.

He crooks a thick finger at her and she eyes him off.

"C'mere."

She glides through the water to his side and her skin is silky as he runs a hand over her hip, down to cup her ass. He's not sure, but he thinks she's not as thin perhaps. That the tracks that pepper her arms are not as raw and not as many. He can't stop staring at her face, damp tendrils of hair framing her sharp cheeks, her eyes brilliant and deepened by the blue water, fringed in pale lashes. She gazes back at him through lidded eyes, her lips flushed pink and softly parted, curved in a smile that is only his, one hand sliding up and over his shoulder.

"Some view, huh?" she murmurs and he yanks her against him and kisses her deeply.

Her mouth opens to his without protest and he thrusts his tongue deep inside, blood pounding hard and abrupt through his veins, thudding its way down and through his tail. She makes a soft noise and tilts her head to the side, her hand tight on his neck. His own great hand is grasping her ass, kneading at the flesh there, skimming the lips of her pussy and the burble of water dims beneath the sudden ragged beat of their breath. He reaches blindly to the side to set his flute down, to free his other hand, and there is the tinkle of glass as it tips over and breaks against the decking, but he doesn't care. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her over to straddle his lap, the water sloshing violently around them. Her small breasts flatten soft against his plastron, the slightness of her intoxicating.

Amber flings her arms around his neck, her legs wrapping around his waist for her heels to brace against the rim of his carapace and the water splashes hotly between them as they grind against each other, his tail curving stiffly up between his thighs to rub against her slippery folds. He shifts onto his knees and the night air is a bite upon his wet shoulders and arms, a vicious contrast against the delirious heat the rest of him is ensconced in. Amber's nipples stiffen hard with the cold and he holds her tighter, the moist slit of his cloaca pressing against her own, rubbing and pushing, the achingly sensitive folds of cartilage gliding between hers. Deep within his tail his cock jerks and abruptly slides forward, out and straight into her, plunging deep. Amber gasps and bites his lip as he's engulfed in the intoxicating warmth of her body, the full slick length of him stretching her wide.

Around them the city sparkles and the first soft flakes of snow drift down through the shadows, their fronds catching the light and glittering coldly. The wind is bitter as it rustles past but he hardly notices, thrusting into her. She grinds her heels into his shell to pull herself closer against him still, her head tipping back to the heavens. Her hair comes loose from its knot, falling in a fiery cascade to the bubbling water and his head swims, blood spiked by the champagne and the dizzying conflict of the hot water and the savage night air. Her skin is slick and steaming, the glow of the city lights playing off her flesh in flashes of gold and silver and snowflakes dust her shoulders and breasts, melting on her eyelashes. He groans as lust surges violently through his veins and the water is a slippery embrace as he tips her forward against the hard plastic seat, her head resting on the edge of the tub. Like this nothing obstructs him and he plunges deep and hard into her, and her fingertips bite into his shoulders, and she opens her eyes and gazes straight into his, her small, stained teeth tightly clenched.

One hand slips around to cup her head and he mashes their mouths desperately together, their tongues hotly twining, breathing into each other as snowflakes hit the water all around them and melt, swirling silver amidst the foam.

The city seems to hold its breath with him, crowded around them in glittering pillars that spiral up to the midnight sky. And then he comes, gasping and shuddering above her and into her and he shuts his eyes and behind them still he is dazzled.

"Y'know, I figured you'd never take money from me," she tells him later as they huddle together in the hot water, another bottle of fancy champagne open on the deck, the city before them misting behind the softly falling snow. "S'the only reason I never offered."

He fidgets, cracking his neck, his brow furrowing a touch. "I wouldn't," he grumbles. "So don't."

She reaches up and cups his cheek, her thumb swiping gently over his wide mouth. He glances at her. Her freckled cheeks are flushed from the steam and snowflakes glitter in her hair, quickly melting. She lifts her cigarette to her lips and takes a long draw.

"Okay," she replies.

He looks back out over the icy cityscape and sniffs. "So, this is what it's like to be rich."

She exhales, smoke coiling with the steam. "I guess so."

The snow is swirling through the darkness, sparkling white as it catches the light that lines the towers and the streets he grew up deep below, the streets below where his father ails and his brothers are one less than whole. As he stares out into the depths of the city, an ache knots his heart and he doesn't understand why.

"Must be nice," he says and she lays her head down on his shoulder and raises her glass to the night.


End file.
